The Maker's Chosen
by foxghost
Summary: The tale of Ellyn Amell, a spirit healer possessed by an unknown power at an early age. Amell/Anders/Cullen/Alistair. Adventure/fantasy/romance. Getting more complicated as the chapters go on. M for bodycount. A/U eventually.
1. The Girl in the Hay Loft

_(Later chapters aren't nearly as dark as this one. Ok, maybe SOME of them. There are fluff along the way. BTW, the way Ellyn and Anders act toward each other from the very first convo sets the tone for the REST of their relationship. Nope, not healthy. If you're interested in the psychology behind their both messed up minds, look up "Codependency and narcissism".)_

1

Ellyn was tired.

She had been running for days on her bare feet, hardly eating anything. She missed her mother.

The straw she was sleeping on this night was moist; a storm recently passed and the smell of summer hung in the air. There were no dogs in this small village, and she missed the warmth of one. She shivered in the darkness.

_Shh...don't be afraid. I'll protect you._

Did she imagine the voice? It sounded like mother. It sounded like all mothers. It was love and protection, food and comfort. It was milk from the breast, sweet and coying. The straw beneath her suddenly felt warm, soft, as in an embrace. An infinite embrace that extended to the edge of her dreams.

_Good night, sweetheart._

Ellyn slept.

2  
>The barn was a haven of sorts for village boys. Sure, there was always work, but there were places in a barn to hide in, a loft to share with the other boys when there was liquor to be had.<p>

Jones was one of these boys. Today was a good day; his slingshot won him a crow, fat and full of feathers. The feathers he stripped for his mother. It gave him an excuse to hunt a bird and be alone with it.

On this particular morning, he chose a dagger he made himself. It was a pitiable and small thing with a glass blade he polished himself, wrapped in dirty linen. It was sharp enough and hard enough to cut through bone. Jones approached his usual spot, a corner of the barn where the sunlight rarely visited to reveal the dark rusty stains beneath the rough strewn hay.

When he was done it was almost breakfast time. He had no need of it, but his mother might get suspicious if he did not make a show of eating. Jones reached out to his right to grab a handful of straw for wiping his hands, and it touched something soft. Silky. Stringy. Not unlike hay, but...alive.

Ellyn yawned. She stretched. When she opened her eyes, she saw a boy. She thought it might have been a boy - it was definitely the right shape and height for a boy - but the look in its eyes suggested those of a wolf. A beast. A monster with bloody dribble running down its chin. Little girl reflexes kicked in and she began to scream.

The form that was Jones rushed forward with his dagger, blade downwards. He wanted the screaming to stop. There was a throbbing in his head, a hunger that only ceased when fresh blood filled his mouth. Her scream had taken away his only solace.

Outside, the villagers gathered. They knew only that Jones was missing and there was screaming in the barn. In a town as small as theirs, a lost child was everyone's business. Jones' mother, missus Ellis, stood frozen in place by the front of the barn. A rivulet of blood flowed from the straw peeking through the gap under the doors and pooled beneath her feet.

3

Anders cradled his pillow and sucked his thumb while he slept. Stupid thing to do, he knew. Childish. He was twelve. Twelve year old boys - men - did not do such things, but right now, he did not care. He missed his mother, and her scent was no longer carried in his pillow. It smelt of dog, wet straw, mildew and vomit. He really wanted to cry, but sucking his thumb while burying his face in his pillow was one of the few private things he was able to do. If he was to cry, he did not want to do it in front of the templars.

Templars. They were afraid of him, he knew. Most mages were taken younger than him, and though he did not know any spells, he was a natural elementalist. He called fire and lightning at will. The only way they were able to hold him was to drain his mana constantly. As a side effect, he was tired and wanted to sleep all day.

Instead he was made to walk all day. He did. So at camp all he could do was suck on his thumb and breathe into his pillow.

"Maybe we should hire a horse at the next village we come across," Ser Clara poured some water into a clay mug. Boiled twice, and still jittery. She gave Anders a nudge with her gauntlet, but he only shook his head without looking at what she was offering.

"Whatever for?" asked Ser Kevan. Unlike Clara, he had been a templar for over two decades. He knew what mages were capable of. _Women_. He thought. Women should never be allowed on these collection trips.

"The boy is completely exhausted. He can hardly walk. Give him another day and we'd probably have to carry him. Do you want to carry him?"

"I'm not carrying anyone. He will walk." Ser Kevan was resolute.

"Then let's at least get a proper meal at the next village and resupply. We're almost out of food," Clara changed stance and appealed to his practical side, this time. "If you're going to insist that he walks, it's going to take an extra week to get to the circle."

Decent food. That would be an improvement, thought Anders, half in a dream.

4

Anders cowered behind Ser Clara and shivered. It was a warm day. The scent of burning flesh assaulted his nostrils. He fell on his knees and retched.

"Thank you, Anders. I swear I will see you to safety after this." When they reached the gates, Ser Kevan went ahead to ask about an inn, only to be met with a shovel across the helmet. Two templars were no match for an entire town of fanatics. Anders reacted by instinct. He raised his hands and called down the elements.

Now all around them there were only blackened corpses. Ser Kevan among them, caught in the blast.

Clara held out her hand and nudged Anders forward with her. With her other hand she held her sword out at chest level. Deep inside she knew she was useless compared to the boy beside her, but her armour and stature permitted her only to protect. To protect anyone smaller than her.

_To shield and to protect and love. Yes._

Clara shook her head. Did she think that? The Order warned against blood mages and how they would bore into your head with errant thoughts, but these felt like her own. She was protecting a little boy, wasn't she? They must have been her own.

_Protect the pure. Love. Be a shield for the chosen one._

They followed the path together into the village. Something called to them; she wasn't sure what it was, but it was irresistible. As long as they moved forward and followed it, they remained undeterred.

_They mean to keep her locked away here. You must bring her where she will be safe. She is the Maker's Chosen._

The path led them to a barn. There was a chantry sister in front of it, leading a group of villagers in prayer. A chantry sister, here? There wasn't a chantry around for miles. There were wandering sisters that went from village to village, a source of spiritual support in remote outposts such as these, and she must have been one of them.

In one quick movement, Ser Clara ran her through. Anders blinked in surprise. Templars did not make a habit of randomly killing people, especially ones in chantry robes. The villagers rushed toward them, but they were unarmed and no match for a trained templar. Clara called forth a blast of energy that sundered their minds. Strange; it was never this powerful before.

The doors to the barn were ajar.

An abomination laid dead on the floor. Twisted, horrid thing. Dried blood could be seen through patches of the floor not covered by hay. Broken glass crunched under Clara's boots. She made a gesture to stop Anders from walking forward with his thin leather soles.

His first memory of Ellyn was of a glowing spirit in the barn loft. Later he recalled nothing out of the ordinary about her. Simply a little girl sitting in a white shift, bathed in dusty sunlight. Her curly blond hair was matted, messy, tangled with straw. Her arms wrapped around her knees with her chin atop of them, she was everything she appeared to be: a scared little girl hiding in a barn loft.

Clara dropped down to one knee, planting her sword into the ground and bowed her head in prayer.

She clearly saw something he did not. He also saw something she did not. He saw the fade. The world beyond the veil. It should not be here. It shimmered and folded around the little girl. He did not know much about magic, but he knew he could not fight this. Anders resorted to the one thing that always protected and saved him.

"Hello? Are you alright up there?" He threw on the brightest smile he was able to muster, considering the carnage around him. "My name is Anders. What's yours?"

"I'm...Ellyn." The vision in the loft was now just a girl. Tears flowed down her cheeks and fell from her chin. "There was a monster, and I...I...I'm so sorry."

The spell was broken. Ser Clara raised her head. "Ellyn Amell?"

"Ellyn Amell, Eight River Street, palace district." Ellyn recited in the way that little girls did when they got lost.

"Ellyn, why are you alone? What happened to your guardians?" The Amell child was entrusted to two of her friends. They left on the same day she did with Ser Kevan, and was due to arrive at the Circle at least two weeks ago. She tightened her grip on the sword and readied her mind should she need to cut this mage down.

"There was howling...and blood everywhere," Ellyn was crying again. "The mama told me to run."

Clara sheathed her sword. "Come down and climb onto my shoulders, child. There's broken glass all over the floor."

5

Ser Clara was made a full member of the Templar order only a year ago, and this was her first "collection" mission. With Ser Kevan dead, she was alone, with two mage children. This was unprecedented.

Worse yet, she did not remember how she came into possession of the child named Ellyn. Or how Ser Kevan died. There was an attack. A fire, maybe. Her sword was bloodied. More than that she was uncertain.

She felt an overwhelming need to protect these children. This was not new. She felt a need to protect Anders when the Amell child was not yet with them.

All she was certain of was how easy their journey became when Ellyn joined them. Her armour weigh nearly nothing. When they were hungry, food appeared out of nowhere. Yesterday a deer walked into their camp and waited to be slaughtered. Today, it was a rabbit, and they didn't even need meat.

Anders was laughing a lot. Clara was glad of that too. Anders was miserable when they took him away from his little hovel of a home. Clara knew that where he was bound was cleaner, safer, and he will be surrounded by new friends; for every mage child that was lucky enough to end up in the circle, there were countless ones who were killed out of fear of the curse in them, but all Anders knew was the immediate pain of being torn away from his mother.

Ellyn was unusual in the sense that she did not do any magic, even when there was danger. Perhaps that was inaccurate; she did not do any obvious magic. She extruded an aura of calmness that affected all around her, and that extended to the trees and animals. A silent calm followed them. She even lifted the sorrow from Anders' heart.

"Will you be my new mama?" Ellyn asked one night, out of the blue.

"I can't be your new mama, little one. I'm a Templar." Clara had, at one point, wanted to marry and have children; but what one wanted and what life offered were often completely different things. "You will be apprenticed to an enchanter, Ellyn. I can't promise that the enchanter will be a woman, but they will guide you and take good care of you."

"I can be your new brother, if you like." Anders offered.

"I know." Ellyn giggled and threw her arms around him. "I like you. You're nice."

Unlike Clara, Anders did not forget the scene in the village. He had no inkling of what Ellyn was. He only knew that if he wanted to live, and see this child locked up in the Circle tower, he needed to stay on her good side. For the first two days after they left the barn where they found Ellyn, Anders wanted to go home. To his astonishment, he realized that they were heading home, away from the tower.

When he questioned Ser Clara, she told him that he was ridiculous and of course they were going in the right direction. Did he think she was stupid?

When he turned to Ellyn for support, he saw only her eerie bright smile.

There was no way that he wanted this girl - this thing that looked like a girl - anywhere near his family. He made sure he wanted to go to the circle tower from that moment on. The next day, he found them heading towards Lake Calenhad instead of away from it.

Ellyn seemed oblivious to all this. She held his hand, laughed at his jokes, ran circles around trees, and picked flowers.

6

They arrived in the circle together and was promptly separated. As far as the templars were concerned, strong bonds between untrained mages only led to trouble. Anders was apprenticed to an elementalist mage, while Ellyn was kept under observation for the first year.

No one knew what she was. Even the First Enchanter Irving was puzzled. They knew she was a spirit healer, but that was only the surface of her powers. She was able to not only cure wounds physically, but mentally as well. She reached into a mind and 'picked out the bad bits' as she described it. It also meant she was able to make thralls of anyone near her, making her one of the most dangerous mages the circle ever encountered.

In other words, Ellyn had the powers of a blood mage without using anyone's blood. When the First Enchanter brought this up with the Knight Commander, he was appalled.

"This six year old is practicing blood magic?"

"No. She's not 'practicing' anything. She simply is. She is powerful, and has the ability to influence an entire army if need be, but she does so without blood."

"That sounds dangerous." Knight Commander Greagoir was not convinced.

"No more dangerous than the lad who came in with her at the same time. He threw fireballs. Without any training."

"And this girl does what, control minds? She can turn this entire tower's templar force against itself. How does she do this, exactly?"

"Well, spirit healers deal with a benevolent spirit in the fade and -"

"-a demon, you mean-"

"No, no. Spirit healers are generally much older. They have learned to distinguish between the demons and the good spirits, which are the Maker's first children." Irving explained, in a tone as one would to a child. "There are cases where a child is chosen by a spirit. Usually they're not very powerful and are only capable of basic healing spells without proper training. The one who chose Ellyn just happened to be old, experienced, and very, very powerful."

"So, what, this spirit teaches the child to cast healing spells, like a demon teaches blood magic to a blood mage?"

"No. She calls the spirit when she needs to cast a healing spell, and the spirit does so on her behalf."

"This is sounding better by the minute." Greagoir said in an exasperated tone. "It sounds like she becomes possessed every time she uses magic."

"Well, that is exactly how spirit healers work. Powerful ones like her are very rare." Irving insisted. He knew where this was going. Greagoir intended to have the girl killed before she became a problem. What he did not know was that Ellyn was already a problem. No one in this Circle - including himself - was able to approach Ellyn with ill intent. In other words, she could not be killed by anyone here. "Imagine this: if the Orlesians were to invade again, Ellyn can wave her hand and heal an entire army of men. Men near death will rise and keep fighting."

_It will be wise to treat her well. Protect her. She is valuable to all of us._

Greagoir nodded. What Irving said made sense. The Circle of Magi belonged to the Chantry, and the Chantry was neutral, but he himself was Ferelden and had no illusions that this strenuous peace will last.

Outside, little Ellyn Amell passed by the First Enchanter's room as she wandered the halls to lull herself to sleep.


	2. Innocence and Guilt

1

Ellyn tried on her new apprentice robes. She was getting a new one every few months this year. They were not exactly new, of course; apprentices became mages, and mages no longer needed their old robes. Ellyn was twelve now and had began to appreciate the boning built into them. Men noticed her, and no wonder. Her long blond curls flowed down her back, tied off with a careless knot of twine. Her skin always seemed to glow in the eternal candle light that lit the halls of the Circle Tower.

Even for a mage, she was otherworldly to say the least. Where she walked, voices hushed and people bowed their heads. Anders was surprised to find that her feet actually touched the ground. He got down on his hands and knees and checked once, just to be sure. She just glowered at him.

Anders was eighteen. To him, little Ellyn was always little, curves hinted at through her robes notwithstanding. Her mentality did not show him any different. She giggled easily, chased him through the halls, and threw pie at him in the mess hall not one week ago.

Anders was not so innocent. There were women; of course there were. He was eighteen, handsome, and his charm that saved him as a child now helped him bed women. The girls had no illusions of his faithfulness. In the circle, dalliances were accepted as a matter of course, love almost never. Love was a strong emotion and strong emotions led to deals with demons - or so they were told.

Love meant having something to lose. Love meant a demon - or a templar - had something to hold over you.

Ellyn believed that she loved Anders. It was what she felt for him when she was only six. It had not changed. Neither had she. Her body might have grown, but her innocence and purity remained the same. She was watched constantly and separated from all the other apprentices since the very first day she arrived at the circle. No one was to approach her alone, no one was to speak to her without accompaniment by a templar. She was one of the very few people in the Circle to have her own private chambers.

No wonder then, that she still behaved like a six year old.

Spirit Healers were possessed mages and must be guarded at all times. She was, or so she had them believe. As far as the Circle was concerned, she never left the tower, never went anywhere without Ser Clara, never spent any time with Anders.

"Andraste's flaming hair." Anders began.

"Um...Andraste's flaming robes!"

"No, you have to keep the third word and drop the second. Try again."

"Andraste's itchy hair?"

"Better, but … lame. Probably true. Who has time to wash their hair when there's a war going on?" Anders laughed.

They were hiding in the pantry. The circle had a large pantry, and it wasn't exactly cold. The food was cold. The pantry was not. It was a magical contradiction that mages understood and apprenticed accepted. It made for a nice place to hide after dinner time.

"How about...Andraste's frozen hair?"

"Also lame."

"Maybe it's the hair part that's lame." Ellyn pouted. "Just keep it and keep going. Drop the third this time and keep the second, right?"

"Yup. Andraste's frozen knickers!"

"That's dirty! No knickers!"

"That's dirtier!" Anders wrapped his arms around her shoulders and wrestled Ellyn to the ground. They collapsed in a giggling heap, Ellyn kicking and punching ineffectually. "One...two...and she's DOWN!"

"No fair! You're stronger than me." Ellyn protested through intermittent laughter.

And you can kill me in a second if you wanted to, Anders thought. Fortunately for him, she did not. With their real families only a line recorded in the library, they chose each other. While he dallied with women, he loved only Ellyn with the kind of love reserved for little sisters. Ellyn was family. In the back of his mind he wondered if this was the same over-protection that everyone had for her in her presence, but he felt privileged - he alone had her love in return.

"What do you want to do? We have another hour until bed time."

"Your bed time. Not my bed time." Anders was a mage now, having passed his harrowing. "I can go to sleep whenever I want."

"Neh neh neh," Ellyn rolled her eyes at him. "Want to go see the cat, magey?"

"We can't just go see the cat. It's outside the main doors, and the doors are guarded by templars."

"Yes we can."

"No we can't."

"Yes we can."

"Ok. I'll bite. How do you expect to go past the templars? Is there some secret underground tunnel I don't know about? And if there is, why didn't you tell me this before?" Anders raised an eyebrow. "A drink at the tavern across the lake would've been a nice break once in a while."

"Well, I don't know how to get across the lake, but just going outside is easy. I just walk through the door." Ellyn made a gesture with two fingers of a man walking through through the door. "Just like that."

"You what?" Anders shook his head, "and they just let you?"

"Come with me." Ellyn took his hand. They went through the kitchen and out into the main apprentice quarters, passing by one templar, then another. It wasn't long before Anders realized that they never saw them. The atmosphere around them felt different. Usually, there was a calming aura surrounding Ellyn. Now there was nothing. It was more than that, though. It was as though she tore a hole in reality and hid in it, moving it along with her, and by extension, him.

Soon they were outside under the moonlight. There were no templars here. No one thought to post a guard outside the tower when it was surrounded by a lake anyway.

"How did you do that?" Anders panted just a little. In the last stretch, Ellyn ran, out of nervousness more than anything else.

"I made us, um, not seeable." Ellyn was a lot of things. She was talented, beautiful, sweet, cute as a tabby cat. She was also surprisingly inarticulate and dumb. Ask her anything and be prepared for a non-sensical answer.

"Try again. How did you make them not see us?"

"Well, I take the fade, make it look exactly like the hallway and wrap it around us?" She attempted.

"You're saying that while we were in that hallway, we were in the fade?" Anders was dumbfounded. Sending anyone into the fade required a massive amount of lyrium or a lot of life force. This girl just did it without a second thought.

"Exactly!" Ellyn brightened.

"That's impossible, Ellyn." Anders explained. "When one is in the fade, it's only the essence of the mage that is in the fade. The body stays behind. If that's what you did, we'd have collapsed in the hallway outside the mess hall and we'd still be there."

"Not if you're from the fade, Anders." Her eyes glowed for just a split second. He thought it might have been a trick of the moonlight. It had to be. Her voice seemed to echo out here, but that made no sense either. "And we were not in the fade. Those templars, on the other hand..."

Anders have known Ellyn for six years. This woman was something infinitely older. "Who are you?"

"You do not need to know. Not yet." The girl that was not Ellyn cooed. "For now, you need only to know that you can leave whenever you want. They will always find you and drag you back, of course. But if you want to go, all you need do is walk out the front door."

2

Anders felt the urge to flee. To be away. In a bar in Denerim somwhere. Visit a brothel; drink at an inn. Talk to people who were not mages or templars. Being in the tower was akin to holding a hot mug; he wanted so to pull his hand away and it took all his might to keep holding on.

He was not beaten in the Circle. This life was not bad, per say. There was some freedom to be had, the food and wine was good, his bed was warm, and when it was not he was able to find a girl to warm it easily enough. He was, by all accounts, happy with his lot.

_But you saw them, did you not? The templars and that apprentice girl in the stockroom. And you did nothing._

It was guilt, through and through. He did nothing. He backed away and pretended that he did not see.

_What would you have done if it was Ellyn?_

Stupid question. If it was Ellyn they would have died in a blazing wave of firestorms. If it was Ellyn he might have burned down the tower. He would have perished himself defending her innocence if need be.

_No. You'd have done nothing. You are a spineless, self-serving man who uses people. You'd only fight to save your own skin._

"Get out of my head!" Anders muttered to himself as he ran up the stairs to the great hall. Ellyn was on the apprentice floor, or she should have been. He needed distance. He was no longer certain if these thoughts were his own.

3

Ellyn sat at the edge of the pier, a tabby cat on her lap. It was not hers, and it was not Anders', but they both loved it. She was not even sure what its name was. It responded to Meow.

Ser Clara stood guard not far away. It had been years since Ellyn arrived, and Clara sometimes wondered why they bothered to set a guard over this harmless little girl. When she was away from Ellyn, things were more simple. Deer waited to be slaughtered by her when she was hungry. If her life was in danger, her assailants might simply kill themselves with the weapons that were meant to harm her. When Ellyn was there in front of her, however, the reason became twisted. She was harmless, small, and unable to use any offensive spells. Of course she needed a guard.

Sometimes Clara found herself wandering the halls during her duty hours, and could not recall how she came to be where she was or why she was not with Ellyn. For the last two months, these episodes lessened. Clara thought it might have been the lyrium they made her take in for her templar powers. It might also have been because Anders was gone, but Clara never thought to connect the two.

Ser Clara had suspicions of the relationship between the two mages, but she was sure that even with his base depravity, Anders would not touch a twelve year old. Now that he was gone she was not so sure. Ellyn seemed to spend her days pining away, waiting. It was a matter of time before they brought him back, but the templars were sent from Denerim, far to the northeast. He might have fled to the south, away from Denerim.

"Clara?"

"Yes, Ellyn?"

"Why would anyone want to run away from the Circle?"

"Well..." Ser Clara struggled to come with an acceptable answer. "It's rather like how you want to come outside once in a while. Some people just want to go farther away, that's all. They want to see the mountains, the city, or...go shopping."

"They'd risk their lives to go to market?"

"Some people take their shopping very seriously?" Ser Clara had no real answer. She was given to the Chantry as a child, and had as much choice as Ellyn where freedom was concerned. Her career choices were either chantry sister or templar, and Clara was not able to imagine a life of quiet contemplation for herself.

"Do you have any brothers or sisters, Clara?"

"I grew up in a Chantry orphanage. I don't know if I had any siblings."

"But if you do, they wouldn't abandon you, would they?"

"Is this what all this crying and waiting is about? Oh Ellyn." Clara breathed a sigh of relief; it wasn't first love or anything complicated. "Anders didn't abandon you. He's just older than most children taken to the circle. For you, this is the only life you remember. For him, there was life before the circle. Besides, he knows you'll be safe and well taken care of here."

"He could've taken me with him then!" Ellyn thumped her hands on the dock and sent the cat running. "Andraste's frozen knickers!"

"He's a horrible influence. Don't let me hear you say that again." Ser Clara resisted the urge to laugh. Ellyn probably imagined Anders shopping at the market for a new staff. Clara knew he was probably in places where he couldn't possibly bring Ellyn along. "One single mage is hard to spot. Two mages, one of them a child, makes an easy description."

Ellyn stewed. She clicked her heels together irritably. "Well, I want to go shopping too!"

"Ellyn," Clara held out a hand and helped her up, her tone suddenly serious. "Don't run away. You're an apprentice. If they find you, they can make you Tranquil."

"No, they can't." Ellyn stuck out her lower lip. "But I'll stay. Mama says it's not my time yet."

"Who says...?" Clara began her question, but found herself losing her train of thought. What was it?

"I'm hungry. Let's go inside for supper."

4

In a small tavern in Lothering, a man in a chantry robe dangled a silver chain with a gold earring in front of Sister Hannah. He held it very still. The earring quivered lightly, scattering candlelight across the table. He reached his other hand over the table and took hers, raising it to the top of the chain.

"Now, you take this and hold it just like I did. Concentrate on it," he held out his now free hand. "Rest your fingertips on my palm, here. Think yes."

Wide-eyed Sister Hannah nodded. "Like this?" The earring began to wave forward and back. Her fingers tapped down ever so imperceptibly.

"So, Sister Hannah, you've spent your entire life in the Chantry." Forward and back, "and you want to be free."

"That's not true." Hannah looked past the ring at him.

"Shh. Talking breaks the spell." He gestured at the earring. "Concentrate."

She shifted her glance to the earring obediently. _Chantry sisters_. He thought. _They're a lot like sheep. Give them a ritual and they'll follow it to a T._

"Oh, but no one ever gave you a choice. You didn't join by choice. You're a beautiful woman wasting away her life chanting..." the ring started going around in a circle, "but you do sound so wonderful and your chant must please the Maker. You deserve freedom once in a while."

_That was close_. "You will meet a handsome stranger one night." The ring waved forward and back. _Jackpot_. "And you'll want nothing more than to lean over the table...and..."

"Are you doing what I think you're doing?" _Andraste's knickerweasels_.

Sister Hannah suddenly saw that the man's face was half an inch from hers, and she was gripping his hand tightly. A templar glowered in front of their table.

Hannah dropped the chain and fled.

"Hey, don't you want this back?" Anders waved the chain and yelled after her.

"Anders," Ser Rylock fumed. The word was never so appropriate; her brows knotted, her gaze steeled, her mouth turned down in a disapproving frown. "You can follow me out, or I can clap you in irons. Your choice."

"Couldn't you wait another five minutes? I was so close!" He whined. "Do you think it's easy to get a chantry robe? I was betting my bar tab on this!"

"You laid a bet against the bartender that you can, what, get a kiss out of a chantry sister?" Rylock was incredulous. From what she knew of this runaway, a bet for just a kiss was a little tame.

"Well, you know. I was going to get more than that but the bartender settled for just the kiss so I wasn't going to raise the stakes just because." Anders smiled and shrugged.

"Keep blabbering like that and I'll have you gagged as well."

"Ooh. Kinky. I didn't know templars are into that." He crossed his arms, leaned against a wood post, and threw on a bedroom smile. Rylock put all her weight behind her gauntleted fist and punched him in the stomach.

"Ow." Anders whimpered from the floor. "You didn't have to do that. Just...let me go get my things and change."

"We've already been in your room and got your things." Rylock kicked him, just hard enough to hurt but not break bones. "Get up. Do not think for a second that I will make this easy for you, mage."

5

He was in the stockroom again. It was a series of caverns behind the circle tower, no more than dug holes with unfinished walls. Scones lit the halls here and there, filling the caverns with movement of shadows and light.

An apprentice, barely old enough to be called a woman, had her back against one of the rough walls. Three templars stood around her, stifling any hope of escape. Hair dishevelled, eyes mad with fear, her gaze locked with Anders' far behind the templar in front of her. He pretended not to see and focused on the bottles in front of him, choosing a bottle from the shelf, Anders began to walk away.

"Coward." The girl hissed. Her face morphed into Ellyn's in front of his eyes. The templars appeared to be frozen in place and did not notice anything at all. "Spineless, selfish man."

Anders woke with a start, covered in cold sweat. He was in his own bed in the mages' quarters. Night time. Yes. Everyone else seemed to be asleep. Home. He allowed the word to settle. It wasn't much, but the wines here were better than any he had outside, the bed didn't bite, and the floor was smooth and polished. Escaping only cemented the knowledge that the Circle wasn't such a bad place to live, until he stared straight up at the ceiling and saw bricks.

He missed the open sky. For two months, he tried to sleep outside whenever possible. He made beds out of pine needles, washed his face in the river, took off his boots and walked for miles on soft grass, with no ceiling hanging over him. At night he counted the stars, naming every other one after pretty girls he met, often in their company as they both gazed upward.

Once, he told a girl he was to name a star Angelina for her eyes so reminded him of its sparkle, and she creased her brows prettily and told him that her name was actually Agnes. He only stroked her chin with his thumb, and murmured into her neck, "oh but you will be my Angelina, for you are an angel in my eyes...look how you glow."

She did not protest again that night. Anders knew that women always wanted to believe him, and he let them. He moved on the next morning, well before she woke. Attachment would just be another chain. Besides, if he didn't keep moving, he had no hope of evading the templars.

Anders sighed. Well, he was free to get some wine in the great hall in the middle of the night, anyway. He swung his legs off the bed and stepped into hair.

"Get off my hair," Ellyn clawed at his foot. She was wrapped in a heavy cotton blanket. There was just a hint of shiver in her voice.

"Get up," Anders offered a hand. "You'll catch a cold."

Ellyn ignored his hand and crawled into the bed, burrowing herself in his covers.

"Oh no. No no no no. You're WAY too old for that. Go sleep in your own bed." Anders pulled the covers off in one quick motion. Ellyn hated the cold, and that was the quickest way to dispel her.

"I can't sleep." Ellyn wrapped her arms around him, burying her face into his back. She tightened her grip and pressed against him, "and I missed you."

"Ellyn, don't do that." Anders pulled away, and made himself sound as serious as possible. "Not to any men - or women, for that matter - and you need to stay away from me, understand?"

Her eyes widened and for a moment Anders thought she had the exact look of a kicked puppy. "Maker, I didn't mean it like that." He took her hand, "come on, let's go to your room and I'll read you a story or something."

Ellyn was the only apprentice that had her own room. In reality, it was no more than a storeroom with a makeshift door, but she had one of those big beds that senior enchanters had, there was a vanity table, a mirror - she even had her own dresser.

Just like a princess in a tower, thought Anders. He placed the book back down on her bedside table. Ellyn laid on top of his stomach, using it as a pillow. It was her way of keeping him there. Anders stroked her hair, "now go to sleep."

"Anders? Do you know that templar who brought you back?"

"Rylock? Yeah. I know her alright." Anders grimaced at the memory. "I was bruised for days. She likes to let her fists do the talking. And you know me. I can't shut up to save my life."

"Do you want her gone?"

Anders struggled to listen for any change in her tone. It sounded like Ellyn. "Well, no. She didn't kill me, at least. Who knows what another templar would have done."

"I can make her gone, if you like." Ellyn's breathing was even and slow, nearly asleep. "I don't like that she hit you. She'd just be gone. No one will remember her."

"No, no. I don't want you to hurt anyone." Anders kept his own heartbeat nice and even, giving nothing away. He was reminded of why he wanted to flee in the first place. "I love you. I won't leave you again. Please...just stay the way you are."

As those words left his lips he knew them to be true. He loved her, but it would not be Ellyn that he was leaving.


	3. Moment of Truth

"One can hardly call this 'solitary confinement' if you keep coming in here." Anders mused, holding his head very still.

"Are you telling me I should leave?" Candlelight flickered off a straight razor.

"No, dear. I live on your visits," Anders tried not to wince, and failed. "Just concentrate on the shaving, okay? I know what you're thinking: if I cut him I can just heal it. Well, I don't want to be cut. Be careful."

"How you get so unruly after just one week is beyond me," Ellyn folded the razor away, switching to a comb. "It's like you're carrying a bunny around with your chin."

"Thanks, Ellyn," Anders groaned. "I feel unattractive enough in this pit. I don't need you to put me down too."

"Fuzzy bunnies are cute." Ellyn suggested helpfully. "I like fuzzy bunnies."

Anders held back a laugh. He reminded himself that they had been keeping her like a flower in a glass dome all her life, so it was expected that her stupidity and cuteness went hand in hand. No matter how depressed he felt in his situation, Ellyn always managed to say things that made him laugh.

This was the seventh time he escaped from the Circle. If there was a next time they would probably just execute him as a maleficar, whether that was true or not. He had an inkling that the reason why he wasn't dead already was due to Ellyn's influence.

Ellyn would have visited everyday if she only could. Anders was kept in the basement behind two enchanted doors, and one of the enchantments acted as an alarm. The templars came by at a different time everyday with food, and that only matched up with her free time once a week. She snuck in with the templar, leaving in the morning when the enchantment was disarmed for a change of guards. She came with soap, water, and conversation.

In other words, she came to preserve his sanity.

She was also, inch by inch, driving him absolutely insane.

Ellyn was no longer the awkward tween, all elbows and knees. Even the memory of her ever looking awkward might have been something he made up to veil his own attraction for her. Seventeen year old Ellyn was exceptionally beautiful. She was all long golden hair, pale hazel eyes, classically sculpted features and what appeared to be a perfect body under those apprentice robes.

He hadn't had any female company aside from Ellyn - which did not count - for over nine months. He wondered if he could resist her for another three, but knew that was probably asking too much of himself. Every week. She came down here every week. Breathing in his face while she shaved him, touching his hair, chatting all night, falling asleep on him while her robe draped all over her. The girl was clueless. It was time to make a stand.

"Ellyn, I need you to stop coming down here." There. He said it. As expected, she made the most hurt and confused face she had ever learned to make. It was somewhere between a cat whose cream was taken away and a kicked puppy. He regretted it immediately, but he knew he had to put his foot down this one time. "I'll be out of here in less than three months. I'll be alright."

"But why? Are you sick of me?"

Not in the least. That was the problem. "No. But the templars might get suspicious if I leave this place looking like I went to a spa instead of a dungeon. Maybe they'd just decide to throw me back in here. It'll be good for me to grow a little scruff and look more like a dejected good little mage who won't ever run away again."

"I can come without giving you a shave, no?" Ellyn insisted. She was always stubborn when she wanted to be.

"I don't want you to see me all smelly. You can understand that, can't you?" Anders appealed to her inner neat freak. Ellyn was always scrubbed, her hair always clean. He wasn't sure if it was because of the spirit inside of her - which he suspected had something to do with purity - or if she just had an obsession with bathing. Right now, he was hoping for the latter.

"Oh, alright then." _Jackpot_. "But what if you get hurt? Or if you scrape yourself and it gets infected?"

"I won't." Anders wondered. Well, it was possible. Three months alone in the dark. "I know a basic healing spell like most mages. I'll be fine."

"What if you fall down and break your leg?"

"Now you're just being silly." If he was really injured, he could inform any templar that was standing guard. They were not all heartless. "Come on. Get some rest. They'll get suspicious if you yawn through all your lessons tomorrow."

She was quiet when she left. Anders reached down under his pillow and turned, as was his habit in the mornings. His fingers came upon four full tallow candles and a piece of flint. As an elementalist, he had no need of any of it. He smiled at her thoughtfulness. Useless, but thoughtful nevertheless.

Laughter was heard just at the edge of hearing, like the sound of silver bells. _I guess you do have some self control after all. I'm surprised at you._

"Shut up." Anders muttered. Talking to oneself was not a good habit to get into in solitary confinement and he had no intention to start this now.

_Good for you. If you try anything, I'll have to kill you. Ellyn won't like that._

2

"I saw that," Anders said under his breath as he walked by the templar.

"I don't know what you're talking about, mage." Ser Cullen whipped his head up so that he stared straight ahead. His face was beet red.

One year in solitary confinement while Ellyn grew and developed without him watching over her. Apparently everyone else noticed how much she had grown as well. He was getting quite sick of men staring at his little Ellyn. He did not know about his own possessive side; Anders felt almost irritated with himself.

Part of him knew that the nature of their relationship dictated that he would one day have to give her up to another man, with his blessing. The childish part of him, the one that used to cling to his mother's skirt, said different. He wanted to keep Ellyn innocent so she would always need him.

Ser Cullen just rubbed him the wrong way. He was young, about the same age as Ellyn, and she liked him. When she passed by Cullen in the hall, she turned a little to hide how she blushed. Anders never felt so unsettled in his life.

A templar! Templars were rapists and murderers. They were mage hunters who abused their superiority every chance they got. What exactly did she see in the boy? Anders could've sworn that he himself was better looking - taller, more muscular, and most definitely more charming. Cullen just stuttered and stared at the ground whenever she tried to talk to him.

"If you want to have a conversation, you'd probably have to slap him on the back a lot," he commented over a glass of wine. At least she was old enough to drink with him now.

"Why? What will that do?" Ellyn swayed in her seat. Her wine glass was half empty. Anders did not allow her to drink with anyone else; even when he was there, she was only allowed one glass.

"To get the words out!" He laughed. Ellyn giggled. "Seriously, girl. I don't know what you see in that templar."

"He … um … he feels the same as me." She was changing colours again. It might have been the wine, or not. Anders felt a flare of jealousy. He did his best to keep it hidden.

"You mean that he likes you? Or that he's shy and inarticulate like you?" He left off 'and stupid.' Even he knew when to stop.

"No...he...smells the same?" Ellyn fumbled for a word that fit. "His aura is the same? He … has this air of purity about him."

Anders almost spat out his wine. "You mean he's a virgin?"

"Shh!" Ellyn grabbed his shoulders and pulled him down towards the table. "There's a bunch of templars at the next table! They'll hear us!"

"They're at least as loud as we are." Anders didn't bother looking. He whispered. An exaggerated, conspiratorial whisper. "Don't worry about it." He laughed. "A virgin, huh. That is rare around here. It's no wonder that you noticed him."

Anders felt a weight lift from his shoulders. Nothing was going to happen between these two, not without a whole lot of help. If Cullen hadn't done that by now, he was probably too shy to approach any women. Well, good.

No, wait. Didn't he want her to be happy? He looked across the table at Ellyn. Beautiful, sweet Ellyn. Bumbling. Shy. Inarticulate. An innocent child. A young woman. The most powerful spirit healer the Circle had ever seen. She was his charge, his salvation, his best friend, the family he gathered for himself.

She was all these things. He wanted to give her up to nothing and no one.

_You selfish, selfish man_. A voice called to him in the back of his mind, over the wine. This time, he was quite sure that this thought was his own.

3

The little princess, they called her. Thy had been watching her for some time now. They heard that she was powerful, but they knew how to deal with mages. Drain their mana, and they were as infants. Helpless.

She was drinking tonight. They saw her swaying in her seat talking to that mage, Anders. She would be slumbering deeper than usual. It would be easy to carry her off some place out of sight. She would not be the first, nor the last.

They had taken others before. Young ones. Shy, beautiful little girls. Older than children, younger than women. The only preference they differed on was how they would make them squeal. All three lived on the fear, the pain; to mar the perfection that existed in an innocent, to wipe that brightness from her eyes.

Anders thought he heard a scream in the night.

He sat up in bed so fast his head hit the top bunk. No one else seemed to have heard it. No one else was awake, but he knew he heard something. A cry for help for him alone.

Ellyn.

Anders took his robe in his right hand, his staff in his left. He ran down the hall, dressing along the way.

"What are you doing?" Cullen shouted. He was guarding the stairs to the apprentice quarters this night. Despite the fact that it was only a mage in his small clothes he saw running down the hall, he armed himself immediately, putting his shield between himself and Anders.

"Cullen, come with me. Something's happened with Ellyn." Anders said without stopping. At the mention of her name, Cullen followed.

Both men stopped dead at the door to Ellyn's room. Her curtain was ripped, revealing its innards to the hallway beyond. It was not a large room. Ellyn had, over the years, covered the stone wall with her doodles. Since no one else was ever allowed in here, her teachers did not get a chance to scold her for painting on the walls.

Right now, it was all just one colour. Ellyn stood just above her bed. Her hair fluttered as if there was a breeze in the room, her eyes glowed a fiery white. Light poured through cracks in her skin, threatened to tear her asunder.

Three templars surrounded her, hovering just as she was, faces turned outward, spewing blood from every orifice. They were painting the walls anew with blood. Anders tasted bile in the back of his throat and fought the urge to be sick. Behind him, Cullen's knees gave in, sending the armoured knight onto the ground heavily in a clatter of steel plates.

Anders heard the scrape of boots on stone echoing and fading away. He ran away. Fat lot of help that lout was.

"Ellyn. Ellyn. Ellyn." Anders chanted her name over and over, but she did not seem to hear. "It's Anders. I'm here. You're safe now. It's alright. Come down. I'll catch you."

No response. Anders risked a step forward. One false move and he would end up like one of these fools. He stepped onto her bed, holding his arms out in front of him, his staff left behind on the floor.

Anders wrapped his arms around her. "Ellyn? Ellyn, it's Anders. You're safe. You're going to be alright..."

This was his moment of truth. _Do you love her? Will you give your life to save hers?_

_I do._ He closed his eyes and kissed her full on her lips. The horrors of this grisly scene around them faded away. His lips tingled and the warmth of the kiss spread to his ears; Anders felt his heart clench in a sweet sigh, skin prickling along his scalp. In a heartbreaking moment he understood that he had never truly kissed before.

_So this is what love tastes like._

A blast of energy pushed him full on the chest, smashing him against a stone wall. Anders found himself sprawled on the floor, every bone in his body broken. Blood started gushing from his mouth._ I'm going to die_, he thought. _Like one of those stupid templars_. Vision and sound began to fade, even the pain was leaving him.

He heard Ellyn, six years old, crying in the hay loft. Little Ellyn talking and crying at the same time, "I'm so sorry..."

4

"I demand you bring her out here and execute her at once!" Knight Comander Greagoir was livid. There was a maleficar in their midst. He knew. He had pushed for years to have her made tranquil, and the paperwork seemingly fell through the cracks. Now three templars were dead, slain by blood magic. She had to die. Now.

"Your templars were in her private chambers in the dead of night." First Enchanter Irving held out a stack of paper. "These are the five reports I've found against them over the years. All of them from young women under twenty. And who knows how many more there were that didn't have the courage to say anything."

"She is an abomination!" Greagoir was not going to let this one go.

"So you're not denying that you harboured rapists? Child rapists?" Irving wasn't about to back down either. "And when one of our apprentices managed to fight back, you want me to kill her?"

"Abominations are killed on sight. That is the law. What these men did is in the past. They are dead." Greagoir pointed at the door behind Irving. While Ellyn's room was being cleaned, Irving housed her in his own office. He was the only one who had a key; this was his way of ensuring her safety. "She is alive, and she is a maleficar. She needs to die before she infects this entire Circle!"

"She did not use blood magic, Knight Commander." Irving explained, pacing his words. He had learned over the years that speaking slowly calmed Greagoir. "We found her on the floor sobbing over Anders, and she was not an abomination then. The templars' blood did not boil in their veins, as ones killed with blood magic. They were crushed physically from the outside in. It does require an advanced spell to do that much damage, for sure, but I have no doubt that Ellyn is quite capable."

"Ser Cullen claimed he saw her possessed. He said her eyes were glowing and she was using blood magic."

"And he surmised this by seeing the room covered in blood, I presume? The presence of blood does not denote blood magic. Visit the scene of any battle and you'll see people covered in blood. That does not mean that they're using blood magic." Irving went on, "as for the glowing eyes, that's just a part of her spirit magic. When those templars drained her mana, hoping to disarm her, she had no choice but to call on her spirit for help. One who bonded so young is actually immune to demonic possession. She was not possessed. At least no more than usual."

Ser Greagoir had nothing more to say. As much as he wanted to see her gone, the law was on her side. "She should undergo her harrowing as soon as possible." Maybe then he could kill her when she stays too long in the fade. He stormed off.

Irving turned his key in the lock. "Crisis averted." He gave Ellyn a curt nod. "For now."

Ellyn did not reply. She had not said anything for days, not since they found her crying over Anders' body in her chambers. She cried until her tears ran dry. Anders was placed in a bed near the back of the office, and Ellyn had been sleeping in a chair next to him for the past week. His heart was beating, his breathing even and slow. He was just barely alive, but he would not wake.

"Ellyn, listen to me. Anders is in the hands of the Maker now." Like most Fereldens, Irving was Andrastian. According to Anders, that meant doing nothing a lot. "I need you to recover from this. I want you to go through your harrowing as soon as possible. Can we do that?"

Ellyn nodded. Demons were no danger to her. _I'm a danger to everyone else._ She squeezed Anders' hand. Nothing. She wasn't powerful enough to heal him. He had escaped for the last time and he wasn't coming back. If she ever wanted to hear his laughter again, she needed to be stronger.

_Your time has come, Ellyn. You will take the first step towards your destiny._

5

Anders threw back his coverlets and stretched.

It was a sunny day - one of those perfect summer days, where the sky flowed a deep cerulean, the sun always hid behind a wisp of cloud, keeping the day cool enough to run in. He was woken by the birds nesting in the tree just outside his window. Once a year, or so it seemed, every single bird within ten leagues nested in this particular tree. He didn't mind. It meant waking up before anyone else so he could get his chores done and have the rest of the day free.

Anders pushed the door to the living room and saw his mother by the wood stove. So he did not wake up before her after all. "Morning, mother."

"Morning, sweetheart." She turned to smile at him, while keeping her hands busy stirring some porridge on the stove. "Did you sleep well?"

"I think I had a nightmare," Anders recalled. The memory was already fading away, evaporating like dew. "I was...somewhere else."

"You're not thinking of leaving mother, are you?" She frowned, "I need you here. Promise me you'll never leave."

Anders was about to reply when a knock came upon the door. "Let me get that."

"I'm sure it's not anyone important, dear. Just leave it."

Odd. Why did she say that? They lived on a farmstead in the middle of nowhere. Any visitor was important. Anders opened the door.

There was a little blond girl outside. She looked to be about six. There was something very familiar about her that Anders could almost recall. Something about...spirits. "You will leave him alone. He is under my protection."

"How...inconvenient." 'Mother' cradled her head in one hand, miming a headache. "Are you sure you don't want to leave him to me? I can give him whatever it is he wants..."

"No. And you've got it wrong. This isn't what he wants. Not anymore. You will leave now," the girl grew suddenly to his height, then more, "before I change my mind."

The demon rustled away in a swish of silks and golden bells.

"Wow," Anders reached up and touched his earring. "I can't believe I almost fell for that."

"You did fall for that, you fool. Ellyn was right to worry," The blond girl fixed him with her blinding, fiery gaze. "You were just about ready to sign your soul away, and for what? A memory?"

"It was a good memory." Anders shrugged. "So, we're in the fade together. This is new. How do we get out of here?"

"We don't."

"What do you mean, 'we don't.'" He imitated her serious tone. "I have to wake up sometime, no?"

"Do you remember how you got here?"

"Uh...well," with the desire demon gone, Anders' memories came flooding back. The last bits were especially painful. "Yes. Am I dead?"

"No. If you are dead, you will not be haunted by demons." She shook her head, slowly, her hair a halo in the eternal summer twilight. "So consider that a good sign. The bad news is that neither I nor Ellyn have enough power to wake you. For now, you're stuck here."

"So...you're saying that I'm in a coma."

"Yes."

"A coma which the most powerful healer the circle has ever seen cannot wake me from."

"Yes."

"Andraste's knickerweasels." Anders walked out of the little cottage of his childhood and onto the grass. Pulling his boots off, he laid down and stared up into the blue. "It is a nice memory, though."

The girl near him giggled. Anders turned to look. There was something different about her. He had seen echos of her over the years, but this was unexpected. Ancients spirits did not giggle. "You've changed."

"Ellyn is extraordinary," she mused. "You can dig and dig for years and not find a shred of malice in her. She is pure, innocent love embodied. It's hard to live in that soul and not find joy in some things. She makes it easy to forget your purpose."

"Just what is your purpose, anyway? Who are you?"

"I'm the mother. I'm the protector. The Elven had a name for me, though that is no longer important." She pulled at the grass sadly. "I was once a goddess, but when my People died and ceased to believe, I became just another idea in the fade. As for my purpose...I have misplaced it."

"Great, not cryptic at all," Anders rolled his eyes. "Ancient spirits just love to talk in riddles, don't they?"

"That was as clear as I can make it for you." She said with just a hint of annoyance.

"How exactly do you misplace a purpose?"

"I died and left it with my body. Then I lost that too."

"You're right. Ellyn has been rubbing off on you. That made zero sense."

"Shut up," she scowled. "Ellyn will find it soon enough."

"I'm confused," Anders sang out.

"Live with it."

"Well, excuse me for being mostly dead."

"Don't fret. We'll save you. There will be a heavy price to pay, and one day you just might wish that we never saved you at all." Mythal, the great protector, dropped her voice to a whisper. "Ellyn is not the only one who needs you."


	4. Of Blood and Dragons

_(This is the first chapter that actually coincides with events that occurred in the game, but it doesn't go into them in any detail. If you haven't played the game you will be mighty confused. Time is always chronological except in the Fade.)_

_1_

_You can't save everyone, Ellyn._

"I can try," Ellyn went up and down the tower making arrangements. The Grey Warden had chosen her, as Mythal predicted. She was loathe to leave Anders behind, but with her current powers she would not be able to save him.

She had him moved into the basement, ironically, in the cell where he was kept during solitary confinement. She had it cleaned and a new feather mattress brought in. After leaving an enchantment to sustain him, Ellyn decided that he was safe enough.

"I'll be back for you. I promise." She kissed him, safe in the knowledge that he would not remember.

"Are you ready?" First Enchanter Irving was standing just outside the doors.

Ellyn nodded. She stepped out into the hall. Irving closed the doors and sealed it with an enchantment. "Thank you."

"Are you sure you don't want me to set one that seal him off from the fade?"

"No. I've set protections of my own. It'll sustain him and protect him from demons." She flashed him a casual smile.

"When you get back," said Irving with more than a little curiosity. "You must write all this down. You cast spells that I did not even know existed."

"I'll be back. For him," Ellyn glanced at the sealed door. "Are you sure about sending me away?"

"The Grey Warden has chosen you, and Greagoir will probably find an excuse to kill you after this business with Jowan." Irving sighed. "I told him you were just following orders, but -"

"Not that." Ellyn cut him off sharply. "There's no one else down here, so let's speak honestly. I'm not sure what will happen with the fraternities when I go. My aura only stretches so far."

"I've sent the more troubling members you named down south to Ostargar already, with Wynne to keep an eye on them. Maybe a taste of war will remind them that the unity we have now is best for the Circle."

"You are too optimistic, First Enchanter." Ellyn tapped her staff against the ground impatiently, "I'm worried. For you, for Ser Clara, for all the young apprentices. The mages and enchanters can defend themselves, but what will the young ones do? When the battle is done, the Libertarians and Isolationists will return. I cannot keep the demons away if I'm not here."

"Mages are trained to withstand the temptation of demons, Ellyn. We will be fine."

"Right," Ellyn was unconvinced. She had been listening to the whispering of the fraternities of enchanters, and they grew ever louder over the past year. Mages were trained to withstand demons, but some welcomed them. "Then I have one favor to ask."

"For all you have done for the Circle, you may ask of me anything."

"Convince Greagoir to have Ser Clara do front door duty for a while."

"How long?" Irving asked, surprised. This was not much of a favor.

"As long as possible. It doesn't have to be the front doors, just have her outside of the seals." Should the Circle fall, she wanted at least Clara to be safe.

As she emerged from the cellars with Irving, she spied Cullen in the hall. When her eyes met his, she saw only fear in them.

_No. I can't save everyone._

2

Ellyn never felt so dirty in her life. There was that one time when she awoke from possession covered in blood, but this was ridiculous. Sometimes it took a whole week for them to get anywhere with a decent bath, and after one battle she was covered in blood again.

"I wish the 'cleansing aura' actually cleans you," she said to Allistair after an especially gruesome battle. "I don't even know what's in my hair anymore."

"I could help you clean up the not so magical way." Allistair had been flirting one-sidedly with Ellyn since they met in Ostargar.

"We don't have any clean water! And we're out of soap!"

_I might as well talk to darkspawn_, he thought. "We'll get you a nice bath when we get to the castle in Redcliffe."

"Thank you, Alistair." Ellyn did not enjoy travelling. She missed a clean bed, her dressing table, a bath every night. She missed going into the mess hall at supper time with Anders. She wondered why he ever ran away to sleep in the woods like this. She would gladly trade places if this was what he wanted. She would take the Circle any day. Freedom be damned. A prison was as good as the golden city if there was a hot bath in it.

At night, in Leliana's tent, Alistair was fishing for advice. "I think she hates me."

"She does not hate you. I can't say she likes you either, though. It's more like she's ... indifferent."

"Gee, that really helps." Alistair was polishing his plate mail. It gave him something to do, and he was convinced that Ellyn enjoyed the look of clean, shiny armour. "What will it take for her to at least talk to me? She's totally detached."

"Not to me," Leliana nearly beamed. "She just loves talking about Orlesian fashion. Silks, shoes and shopping. That's the key."

"When I start talking about Orlesian silks just to make conversation with a woman," said Alistair with a smirk, "give me a silk ribbon so I can hang myself with it."

"Well, you're not trying hard enough."

"I'm trying too hard. Compliments bounces off of her like arrows on plate mail."

"See," Leliana sighed. Alistair was just too dense sometimes. "That's why it bounces off of her. No girl wants to be compared to anything from an armoury."

Ellyn was convinced that Alistair was sent to keep tabs on her. Why else would they partner her with a templar? As far as Duncan was concerned, he recruited a healer of the creation school from the Circle of Magi. She did nothing to inform him otherwise.

She was an abomination by Chantry definition. Spirit possession was allowed so long as she kept control, and she knew that she had once lost all control. Irving waved it away as another advanced spell of the spirit school, but she knew better.

She stared out her own eyes and saw Mythal's energy reach out, crushing those templars from the outside in, pushing their plate mail inwards until their blood had nowhere to go but out. When it splashed into her mouth it was ambrosia. She felt the power in them, the ecstasy of life force feeding the power within.

Blood magic. The forbidden school. If she hadn't come back to herself by the time Irving arrived, they would have had to kill her. No trials, no questions. A templar report would state that she succumbed to a demon. No one mourned an abomination.

If Anders hadn't been there, she might have killed half the residents of the tower before being slain by templars herself. She wondered if Alistair knew, and that was why he was watching her so closely. Maybe Cullen told Duncan and Duncan told Alistair...

Morrigan sat down beside her with one smooth graceful motion, rather like a cat, breaking her paranoid train of thought. "Just what is going on with you?"

"It is unlike you to be so … concerned." Ellyn knotted her brows together. Morrigan was an apostate. Ser Clara once told her that most apostates were blood mages, Anders excepted.

"I do not want to see Alistair leading us. You're the less dim-witted Grey Warden. And, well," Morrigan hesitated. She wasn't sure why it was so, but Ellyn reminded her of Flemeth. "I'm curious about you."

"Nothing is going on with me." Ellyn was unused to casual conversation. She was not allowed any friends in the circle aside from Anders, and she did not know how to talk to anyone who wasn't him. He never went around a topic and always got right to the point. She never had to guess. These new companions made her guess all the time and she had a feeling that she had it all wrong.

"Something is. You look fearful." Morrigan made a sweeping gesture with one hand. "On the battlefield you're practically a force of nature, but when you're at camp you look like a deer waiting to be slaughtered. So what are you so scared of?"

Ellyn made a gesture with her chin towards the direction of Leliana's tent.

"The crazy chantry sister? She does have a tendency to stab people in the back, but she's not really all that fearsome..." Morrigan saw Ellyn shake her head. "Oh, you don't mean Alistair?"

Ellyn stared straight ahead, arms around her knees, eyes wide as saucers. Morrigan could just smell the fear.

"Why ever would you be afraid of Alistair?" Morrigan chuckled incredulously.

"Well, aren't you? He has templar abilities. You're an apostate."

"Of course not. He's harmless," Morrigan's expression barely contained her mirth. "He's the one who fears us mages. Templars." She spat it out as if it was a cuss word. "They see 'abominations' everywhere."

"He seems to be okay with you. Maybe he thinks you have your powers under control. He's always staring at me like I'm about to explode and turn into some demon."

Morrigan gave Ellyn a long, hard stare. When she realized that the girl was not simply being coquettish, she stood up, patted Ellyn on the shoulder, and started walking back towards her corner of the camp. "Forget what I said earlier. You are the far more dim-witted Grey Warden."

3

"We can win this." Ellyn smoothed out the map in front of her. "The hillside battle will be easy. There's a a choke point right here. We have a group of archers who can pick off anyone who manages to survive the fire we set … here. That is not going to be a problem. I have a feeling that these creatures will probably come across the water, however."

"Why?" asked a confused Alistair. "That requires jumping off a cliff and swimming across a lake."

"They don't have to breathe, Alistair."

"Oh. Right. So what do we do?"

"We need light around the chantry, and a watch set on the pier. If there's any movement. we come down from the cliff and defend the Chantry. It's not far." Ellyn pointed at the barricades drawn just outside the chantry doors, "I will be in the middle of the barricades where my aura can reach everyone. Leliana, you'll stay by me and warn me if there's an archer training his bow on me. Morrigan, use fire. Just fire. Undead burns like dry wood with candles in them. Sten, go on the offensive, but stay in my aura. Bring a warhammer in case of skeletons. Alistair, guard the choke points. That is all."

_My little commander. How you've grown._

Ellyn was in her element. She was no warrior - her offensive spells were limited to those that kept her from being overwhelmed - but in the midst of an army, she helped them become an unstoppable force. This wasn't much of an army, but it was enough. With Ellyn, thirty men would have the strength of ninety. It would have to do.

She was right; they did come from the shore. A ring of fire surrounded the barricade, the dead providing fuel for more flames. From the darkness they came, wave after wave, the fleshy undead with their skin hanging in tatters made her shut her eyes more than once. Fat turned to tallow and Morrigan set them aflame, leaving fiery lines in the mud to mark their passage.

Skeletons were the problem. They did not burn. Their arrows flew with pinpoint precision; Alistair raised his shield in front of Ellyn and parried, blocking nearing every one, but there were already two in her shoulder and she could not pause long enough to remove them. These men needed her, the last wave of undead was all amongst them, nearly close enough to touch her. Her reservoir of mana almost depleted, Ellyn stumbled a half-step, dizzy, stepping into yet another corpse. She wasn't sure if it was one of theirs or the enemy, but it gave her an idea.

"Leliana, pull the arrows out!" She complied, Ellyn nearly doubling over in pain. Closing her eyes and hoping no one was paying close attention to her, she called upon Mythal, drinking in the residual life force of the blood and bodies around her, healing the holes in her shoulder. Shouting out a signal to the men, she stamped her staff into the ground, writing a glyph of repulsion, and cast paralysis right under her. The magic was repelled outwards.

Skeletons and corpses stood stock-still. As were those men who did not heed her signal. Sten made short work of the skeletons with his warhammer, and they all waited, ready for another wave to come.

They did not. Five hours into their siege, midnight well passed, Redcliffe had won. Ellyn risked a glance at Alistair. His attention was on her, as always. She searched his eyes for any sign of accusation, and saw nothing there but sincere concern. She dropped her gaze.

"I'm fine. I'm not bleeding anymore. Check the ground for survivors," she told Alistair, finally, when she realized that he was staring at the arrow holes and her blood drenched robe. "I can save any who still has breath in him."

4

"I do not understand why we must be here."

They were trudging up the mountain into Haven. It was not on any map; they had only Brother Genitivi's notes to go on. Even those were vague - hints of paths through the mountains, descriptions of carved stones that served as landmarks. It was bitter cold; her aura provided a modicum of warmth, but in a blizzard she was only able to give so much. Morrigan muttered under her breath; Leliana was silent. Sten was getting downright hostile. He was from the North, where it was endless summer.

"There is someone we must save, if we wish sufficient support in the Landsmeet." Ellyn wanted to add 'stop taking out your distress on me,' but she held her tongue.

"We are not travelling towards this Archdemon we must defeat."

"We cannot get to the archdemon without breaking through the horde. We cannot break through the horde without an army. We cannot have an army without the Landsmeet, and we cannot call the Landsmeet without Arl Eamon. We cannot heal Arl Eamon without the Urn of Sacred Ashes. We have been through this, Sten." It was harder than trying to reason with the Knight Commander.

"Then why are we not travelling to the Circle of Magi for the possessed boy first, if you will insist on saving everyone?" Valid question. Ellyn knew she could not simply answer 'because mama said so.'

She had refrained from using mind magic with her new companions; in the Circle, people were either mages or templars. When they came out of their confusion, templars always blamed it on the lyrium, mages blamed it on tricks of the Fade. Out here, there was only her. They would figure it out eventually. "Do not challenge me, Sten. I've sent Alistair to the Circle. Connor is his family, and he has agreed to deal with it himself. We will be meeting him in Redcliffe when we have the ashes. You need to trust me."

"I trust you with my life. I will not simply follow in your shadow as you run from battle."

Ellyn stopped. They were on an upward trail in the mountains. There would not be much life here, but there were trees. She brought her staff out in front of her, closed her eyes, and waited, holding out one hand toward her curious companions, begging silence.

Not a moment later, a deer hopped onto her path. It stood in front of Ellyn, doe-eyed and submissive. She held up her left hand, palm up, whispered a quiet apology, and it dropped down into the snow.

"Pick it up, Sten. It's going to be dinner." She walked ahead. She saw their faces in her mind without having to look back at them; Morrigan, bemused with her lopsided smile, Leliana's horrid fascination, Sten with his flat expression, giving nothing away. A rustling behind her indicated that her command was obeyed.

She walked on, glad for the fact that she left Alistair behind.

5

Time did pass in the fade. There was simply nothing to indicate that it did. If something was not measured, it did not mean that it did not exist. In Ander's portion of the Fade, it was forever summer twilight. Was it morning or evening?

The Ellyn that called herself Mythal was always close by, picking flowers, running, doing pinwheels. All the little things Ellyn did as a child, Anders reminisced. Mythal taught Ellyn magic, and Ellyn taught Mythal how to have fun. It was a two-way street.

For the past few days - or weeks, or months - she sat in the little cottage and brooded. Sometimes her eyes flared and he could have sworn they glowed red instead of white.

"Are you...alright?" She was not Ellyn. If it was Ellyn, he would tackle her, rub her on the head and tickle her until she laughed.

"Ellyn is unhappy."

"Ok then. Is she alright?"

"No."

"You can't just say 'no' and expect me to go away and stop asking questions."

"No."

"So? Explain. Did she stub her toe? Got blood on her? Mosquito bite?" Anders named off, from the top of his list, of the worst things that ever happened to her in his presence. It was a short list.

"She has been seeing a lot of blood and death and she does not like it." Mythal paused, taking a breath before continuing. "She has been using my voice. She does not like that either."

"Um...using your voice? What do you mean?"

"You do know how she speaks, usually? Like a whiny child?" Mythal sighed. "She cannot hope to gain any respect. So she turns to me to form her thoughts into speech for her, and she does not always...appreciate the things I say."

"So? What's so bad about that?"

"The more I speak, the less she does. She has only spoken twice in the past three weeks. Soon enough, she will say nothing at all. She is afraid that she is losing herself. She hasn't laughed at all lately." Mythal paused, looked as if she was about to say something else, and fell silent.

"Something you're not telling me?"

Mythal stared out in front of her, not meeting his eyes. "You will not like this."

"I care about her, spirit. You saw just how much." Anders swallowed back trepidation, expecting news of a new suitor, or some boy - not a templar this time, hopefully - she developed a crush on. Something benign. He had an inkling of what she spoke of, and he did not want it to be true. "If something is wrong with her, I need to know."

"It is ... the blood. She is ashamed of it."

"Maker's breath - she's using blood magic and you haven't thought of telling me until now?" Anders raised his voice, suddenly angry. "Aren't you supposed to protect her from demons?"

"She is not consorting with demons. I gave her spirit magic." Mythal's brows creased and she looked at him with Ellyn's pout, "I am no demon."

"Oh yeah, sure. Tell that to the templars."

6

"I must go on alone." Ellyn knew how preposterous this must sound. They were in the first chamber of the temple. In order to get this far, they battled fanatic after fanatic. Her companions were coverd in blood and gore, near exhaustion. Morrigan huddled in her cloak, chilled to the bone.

Leliana was aghast. "You can't possibly be serious. I'm sure there are cultists in here too. We had to battle scores of them to get this far, and I want to see the urn for myself!"

Ellyn bit her lower lip. She smelled the blood of a high dragon on the cultists. They were not ready to battle a high dragon, and she did not want them to see how she was going to deal with one. All through their journey up to the temple, Ellyn tried to think up a plausible explanation, but all she could blurt out now was, "just trust me. Thank you for getting me this far, everyone. Go back to the chantry and make a fire. I'll be back before morning."

She walked on, ignoring their protests, closing the temple doors behind her.

Mythal opened her eyes and shivered at the cold. She raised her head, surveying the arches and beams, wrinkling her nose at the Tevinter embellishments. They had housed the ashes of Andraste in an old Tevinter temple. If she only knew.

There were people ahead, she could sense them. They smelled of dragon's blood. Every single one of them was infected. This made things much, much easier. Ellyn pulled a blanket out of her pack, found a suitable corner where she could be well hidden, and prepared for a long night.

It was not only humans who traversed the Fade. The Mabari did so as well, in their dreams. High dragons, intelligent and old, walked the Fade as mages did. They drew from it for their fire and magic, haunted by demons while they slept. As they were old and wise, not foolish like mages, they rarely succumb to a bargain with a demon.

Mythal was more than spirit or demon. She was an old god, a spirit that drew from the beliefs of the Elven. When Arlathan fell and Mythal no longer worshipped, the stone in her temples remembered the rituals, remembered her. When the Elven died in Tevinter temples, their blood seeped into the stone, and the stone itself remembered her.

She walked the temple in the Fade. Distances still mattered, but there were no enemies here save the demons who fled in her wake. A high dragon, magnificent, ethereal, perched on a broken arch leading to the inner temple. She roared a greeting and landed in front of Mythal.

Mythal smiled as one seeing an old friend. Dragons were kin to the old gods. "Adelind. How you've grown."

The High Dragon did not speak. She moved her head in a circle and gave a sad, beastly roar, then rested on the ground. Mythal raised her hand and placed it gently on the dragon's cheek. "Remember."

"Mythal. Thank you." A voice emanated from Adelind, not unlike Mythal's. Deep murmurous tones, as if many were speaking at once, warm and inviting. A mother's voice. "It is troubling...to be worshipped by mad men."

"I smell the blood of your children in them."

"They are nursing my eggs and raising my dragonlings." Adelind kept her head on the ground, where she could talk with her friend face to face, "it is a price I pay."

"They are killing people, Adelind. Travellers and knights, anyone who came here seeking Andraste. They will bring the wrath of humans to you, eventually, and kill all your young ones."

"What choice do I have? I cannot leave them."

"I can take Andraste from here. No one will have a reason to come here anymore, and you can be in peace."

"What do I have to give for this service?" Adelind was wise, indeed. "There is always a price, and your kind...does not usually make fair bargains."

"The knowledge of your blood. Same as you have given these worshippers of yours. No more, no less." Mythal gazed into the dragon's eyes, unblinking, and waited for the answer.

Adelind considered this. This was something she already gave to generations of her worshippers. It was not a lot, considering what Mythal offered. No more humans would come up to this mountain to slay her young. "Very well."

Ellyn woke with the taste of dragon's blood just outside her lips. It was a sweet smell like honey wine. It spoke of flights through mountain passes with strong, powerful wings, the joy of wind lifting her ever higher into the clouds. A tear fell from her cheek for this beauty, and for what must do.

She raised her arms, sensed the blood inside the veins of every living being around her, searching for the dragon blood. Every one that contained the taint of that beautiful, powerful being, old and wise. She kept reaching, searching for every last one hiding in the tunnels. A blood mist formed in front of her, the gift of the dragon that Adelind bestowed.

Ellyn saw the mist burn, steam rising from it, dissipating before it hit the arches above. She felt, though she did not see; blood boiling in the veins of those she touched with her invisible, red hands, hands that would never be clean again. When it was done, Ellyn let out a heart wrenching cry and sobbed, for the men and women, drakes and dragonlings, all the life she extinguished with one foul spell.

"It's not fair! You lied to her!" Ellyn accused Mythal through her tears, "you promised her you will protect her children!"

_I promised her I will bring her peace, and no humans will come here. She assumed I will protect her children. She is in peace. It is done._

_Remember this, Ellyn. We from the Fade always take more than we give._


	5. Power of Memories

1

Ellyn blinked her eyes open.

She never knew she was able to do this before, letting herself retreat to the back of her head and allowing Mythal to take over her senses. There was a distant ache in her muscles, slight pain on the tops of her ears from the cold, but she managed to avoid the scent of death and blood and dragons. Like taking a nap and then waking up to find that she had travelled all day.

It was surprisingly comforting. Probably not a good habit to get into, she reminded herself. Behind her were jagged, broken stone arches and cliffs that opened into an abyss. Adelind was there, lifeless, her blood boiled dry in her veins. Ellyn ignored the pain in her chest at the sight of the dragon and pushed forward.

The moment she stepped into the inner temple she felt a sudden groan of the stone as they welcomed her, if stone could breathe, or think, or live. It was a collective sigh of relief, like falling into a feather mattress at the end of the day. Curious. It spoke of great battles, death, sadness and loss. An old memory, not her own, of a close follower, not unlike one of the companions she had now. A lot of walking on a seemingly impossible quest. The image of him stood rooted in place near another set of doors ahead.

_He's not real._

A spirit, then. One who imitates the living? Ellyn hazarded.

_No. Like memories recorded in the stone. Living lyrium. A trap set to go off in complicated but predictable ways. Not truly alive. And some of them...are not even real memories._

Ellyn did not understand, but she found she understood this wide open world very little so she turned to Mythal's guidance. The first room was simple as long as she kept in mind that they were not real, though fear nipped at her as her training warned her of demons and shades even though these ethereal forms appeared human. She did not even need to ask Mythal for the answers for their riddles; the Chant of Light was beaten into her from the very first day she arrived at the Circle. Stone doors ahead swung open to a cavern of a room, showing nothing but darkness. She stepped through -

And she was six years old again, sitting in a hayloft, Ser Clara beckening her to come down, she would be giving Ellyn a ride on her shoulders. A doorway was open behind her, with green grass and fields, welcoming blue skies. She reached out for the ladder, maybe, even if they're not real, she still had to reach the door...

_Ellyn!_

A sharp rebuke rang out, and everything dropped away before her, the rung she was reaching for turning into smoke and then nothing. A yawning chasm stretched before her eyes between the floor she was standing on to another door. A quick glance revealed no switches or levers anywhere.

It occurred to her suddenly that if what she just saw was not real, neither was this. Ellyn closed her eyes and tried her best to feel the shape of her room with mana. The hollow places where magic did not reflect in this place, the walls, the floor, and a suggestion of a narrow bridge along the edge of one room. Eyes still closed, she walked towards it, then took a normal, not-so-tentative step forward, in what she thought might have been expected of her.

She found solid footing, masked by whatever magic protected this place, invisible to all but mages. Test of faith indeed. She wondered, briefly, what would have happened if someone who was not magi tried the gauntlet. It would probably be a different gauntlet.

The next room found her face to face with herself. "Ellyn."

"...you're not me. Be gone, demon." Years of circle mage training told her to stop talking to the demon. This was special, she reminded herself. This was part of the test.

"Am I? Who are you?" Her doppelganger smiled with sweet innocence. "You left me behind at the Circle Tower. I miss you."

"I am Ellyn. You're just a shade."

"Oh but that's not really true, is it? Ellyn, so innocent. Ellyn, so deceptive. Hiding your magic from your new friends," her smile turned wicked, then eased back to the innocence again. "Hiding your love from Anders...even he doesn't know who you are."

Ellyn had the urge to just - what? She had no offensive spells, and none of them would work on this ...vision. Part of the test, that was all. This was part of the test. "I do what I have to do."

"Oh, so that makes it okay, does it?" She pulled a necklace out of her pack, and gestured it in Ellyn's direction. "How much of you are left, I wonder?"

She was gone. That was almost worse than the dragon, Ellyn thought, as she draped the necklace over her hair.

The next room brought her finally to the urn. No more tests this time. She removed her robe and stepped over the fire, which did not hurt, but she winced nevertheless. Ellyn turned to see the guardian, there to inform her that she had passed the gauntlet and was now free to take a pinch of ashes.

_If Mythal was wrong about this I will die here._ Reaching into her pack, she removed a small leather pouch and her herb knife. She took a pinch of ashes and wiped it into the pouch, then after taking a deep, deep breath - she was not fond of pain - she opened her vein and let her blood fall into the urn.

A rush of memories assaulted her, knocking her back, but she retained her footing and avoided a backward tumble down the stairs. A headache bloomed, like the one she had when she drank her first lyrium potion, but worse, much worse. It shuttered her vision and the roaring of the fire behind her subsided, and there it was - a lifetime of memories.

There was a mother, laughter, singing and chanting, an overwhelming sense of faith. Hands reaching out to her in veneration. There was a battle...many battles, a final one. Betrayal, fire, and then nothing at all. The old memories and the new memories meshed together, all the things she learned growing up in the circle, the history lessons, Tevinter, the Black Divine, and it all came together to create a picture of the world. The Chantry, the Circle, Templars, the power it all held.

It was wrong. _It was not what I wanted. _Ellyn shook her head. _No. These are not my thoughts, these are not my regrets, these are not my choices._

An inrush of power fused with her own, warmth spreading all the way out to her fingertips. Ellyn looked down at them and could almost see a faint blue outline to her hands, a testament to their healing powers.

_Now, Ellyn. Let me._

Mythal opened her mouth to speak and the voice that came out was Andraste herself. "Your duty is done, Guardian."

She turned to leave as the temple began to crumble around her.

2

"What was it like, growing up in the Circle?"

Anders had gotten used to the sight of Mythal. She acted like Ellyn most of the time, but had the disconcerting habit of starting and continuing conversations halfway and expecting him to just understand and go with it. "Wouldn't you know that from Ellyn?"

"No, I do not. She has been very … isolated. The only people she ever talked to were you and Ser Clara." Mythal purposefully left out Irving as Ellyn said it was a secret. "You keep running away, and Ellyn doesn't really understand why."

"It's not really that bad." Anders shrugged noncommittally. "I just don't do very well locked up, that's all."

"What exactly do you run away from?"

"Why would I want to live in a prison - Is that a serious question?" Anders stretched out his arms in a wide arc. "Look at this. I mean, this is the life. Wide open fields, wind in my hair, a pretty girl by my side..." _and I didn't want Ellyn to start killing templars left right and center just because I hate them. I ran away because I didn't want to be near you and you put voices in my head but oh look here you are!_

"You should know that I'm immune to your advances." If glowing white eyes could be steely, this was it.

"Ooh. So serious. I was trying to give you a compliment." Anders reached behind her ear, pulled a rose out in a flourish, and she instinctively reached out for it. Ellyn's muscle memory. "It's the principle of the thing. I'm not a murderer. Sometimes I'm a thief, a liar, and a cheat, but I don't deserve being locked up in a tower for the rest of my life."

"So, all these mages..." Mythal looked thoughtful. Time to go on a roll.

"We're slaves! We're kept in a tower, some of us are made tranquil - which is worse than death, really - and they enchant things for gold. We supply Ferelden - no, Thedas - with magical doohickeys and they keep us locked in this factory to churn them out. The money goes to the Circle, sure, that's what they say, but how much does it cost to keep a bunch of people in a little tower in the middle of the lake in dormitories? No, the money goes to the Chantry, and they get nice and fat and powerful and they rule the bloody world."

"But Andraste -"

"Andraste was a slave! Andraste freed slaves! I doubt any of this is what she wants."

"No. I guess not. So you believe the Chantry is the root of the problem then? The Chantry is no longer following the teachings of Andrate?"

"You should know. Ellyn spent all her time in the library when she was going through that phase." Anders pushed up from the grass so as to meet her eyes better. "Remember that? She went through this religious phase and decided to dig up all the books on the Chant of Light in the library? She found the old verses that the Chantry simply 'struck out' from the official ones."

"Struck out? What do you mean?"

"They change the rules. If they don't like something in the chant, they just don't use it anymore. When they marched on the Dales, they wiped the elves from the chant too." Anders signed in exasperation, "and I can't even run away."

"You do run away." Mythal pulled the petals on the rose, soft, velvety thing conjured up from Ander's memories, and decided that the Fade should have more roses.

"Yeah. They always drag me back. Maybe I should try to make for Tevinter next time."

"It doesn't seem...fair, then?"

Anders mulled it over. Fair. Unfair. "I'm too old to think about something as being unfair, spirit. Children think like that." He let the silence hang there, for a minute, then felt that wasn't quite true. "Ellyn thinks like that."

3

"I'm worried." Leliana said to no one in particular. Dawn came an hour ago with no sign of Ellyn.

No one answered. Sten might as well have been a statue with a sword strapped to his back, and Morrigan...well, she was Morrigan.

The little Chantry was no more than one great room with a couple of small, side rooms. Only the blood pools congealing here and there told of the battle that had taken place; Sten and Morrigan made a great bonfire outside with the cultists. Leliana was dressing the rest of the venison, slicing them into strips, rubbing salt onto it for keeping. As the scent of charred human wafted in from the outside, under the doors, Leliana thought food was the last thing she wanted.

"And why exactly was I doing the hunting all along if Ellyn can just magick food out of the woods?" Leliana ranted to the fire in the hearth.

"You offered," Morrigan's voice drifted out of the library, all matter of fact. "I wouldn't worry about our fearless leader. She's more capable than you think."

"She's a capable healer. She's no battlemage in those Circle robes!" Morrigan stepped out of the library with a stack of books only to see Leliana's eyes going wide with horror, and she rolled her eyes in answer. "She can't even run!"

Morrigan cackled. A long, throaty laugh that rang and echoed through the small, stonewalled hall. "Oh...and what would you have said of my mother? She's a healer too, much more capable than I. Alistair said she's an old lady who talks too much. I reckon that's all you'll see too."

"Ellyn can hardly be compared to the Witch of the Wilds."

"I'm just saying she doesn't need to run, that is all." Morrigan stalked off to the library for more books. This place was a veritable treasure trove of ancient texts. She was determine to leave with half of the library and have Sten carry it off the mountain if need be. "She's late. I hard think that means she's dead."

"Very reassuring, Morrigan." Leliana continued her work. It was always a good idea to store food, especially since they were so high up in the mountains. There were some hardtack and cheese in the pantry, salted fish down by the little store at the docks, pumpkins in the fields. Ellyn left some instructions on digging for elfroot, and if that mage didn't come back soon maybe she should collect some by the herb garden outside.

Ellyn pushed open the double doors, bringing in a gust of cold air and flurries, and quickly ran straight to the hearth with a litany of complaints about her freezing limbs. Small, helpless, and oh so dear, the thought came to Leliana. She was keenly aware of the contradiction that was Ellyn; strong enough to lead an army, yet soft and innocent and vulnerable like a little girl.

"Oh, here, you can hold on to this." Ellyn dug into her pack and pulled out a tiny leather pouch, seemingly empty. "The ashes. I thought you might want to carry them."

Leliana wanted to give her a lecture when Ellyn came in; a whole speech about how it was dangerous to go on her own, stupid, even. That she really wanted to come along and see the temple, and it all evaporated the moment she saw that smile - where her whole face radiated love and happiness, so very real - and she thought, for one quick moment, that it was a special kind of magic too.

"We really should leave now," Sten spoke, startling all of them into attention. "We're wasting day light."

Leliana put a finger to her lips. In the space of a few minutes, Ellyn had fallen asleep by the fire. "We can rest here for a few hours, at least. The trip to the Circle Tower and back to Redcliffe takes longer." She picked up a strand of Ellyn's hair that fell perilously close to being singed by the fire and tucked it behind her ear.

4

Allistair knew, for a fact, that Fleur did not like him.

When Ellyn named the dog Fleur, he laughed out loud and told her that it was a girl's name. One did not name wardogs 'Fleur' - and she stared at him like he was the Archdemon itself. The dog mirrored the glare and he swore that it had a vendetta against him ever since.

The last person - animal - that Alistair wanted as a companion on this trip was Fleur. "The roads between Redcliffe and Lake Calenhad docks are safe, it's a short trip, and I need all the help I can get with these cultists."

She was right, of course. She might be barely eighteen, and didn't know how to handle herself in a fight - Alistair had to stand in front of her most of time time and cover her since she did not understand the meaning of cover - she had a good head on her shoulders, or so Arl Eamon would have said if he wasn't lying in a bed all comatose.

"I think she hates me, Fleur." Alistair replayed their first meeting in his brain. She was amiable enough until their first fight with a darkspawn emissary. After that it was all averting of the eyes and plain avoidance.

Fleur barked, sounding exceedingly happy. "Sure. I'm sure you agree with whatever opinions she has of me. What are they, anyway?"

A low growl back in the throat was all Fleur had to offer. "Oh, I figured that." Flash of brilliance. "Wait, she's afraid of me?"

Affirmative bark. A side tilt of the head. _You didn't know?_

"Great, now you're calling me an idiot." Allistair rolled this shoulders. Travelling with Ellyn had became a bit of a bad habit while she lightened all their luggage and armour. "I'm not an idiot, am I?"

Happy, affirmative bark.

"I hate you."

Ellyn was right. The walk from Redcliffe to Lake Calenhad's docks was uneventful. There were people leaving from the south on the roads, with their wagons, but even bandits were moving North, away from the blighted lands. There was an annoying templar at the docks who Fleur intimidated into giving them a ride across to the tower - good girl - and then … chaos.

_Should have known it was too easy._

5

_Ellyn, Abominations at the Circle Tower, tower sealed, annulment called. Come quickly. -Alistair_

The message was wrapped around Fleur's collar. They met her while walking into Redcliffe village, nearly bowling Ellyn over with open affection. A moment's panic seized her. Damn. _I knew this was going to happen_.

_You didn't warn Cullen._

Cullen was still considered junior so he was probably guarding the apprentice floor. With any luck, he would have escaped before they sealed the tower. She consoled herself with this and the thought that she wasn't really able to do anything for him through Irving anyway. She did not want to bring suspicions of impropriety between them, and though it was natural enough to protect Clara, it would have been wholly suspect to protect Cullen.

Good thing she sent Fleur with Alistair. No messenger was faster than a Marbari. She knew it was all just a matter of time, but she didn't know it was going to be so soon. The plan was to get the mages out to Redcliffe - so she could save a few more of them, with Irving, hopefully - before Uldred, if he wasn't dead, returned from Ostagar.

When she was in Ostagar, Uldred was there fighting with the Grand Cleric, insisting that the Circle of Magi would be able to handle the signal fire without the Wardens. Pride, definitely. If there were abominations in the tower, Uldred must have came back. What was it that Anders told her once? Hunger is easy, desire you can talk out of since she would always try to leave instead of fight. Sloth, think active thoughts.

But pride? Bring an army of templars, and even that might not be enough.

"Ellyn?" Leliana glanced at the note in Ellyn's hand. Alistair had blocky, slanted schoolboy writing, and the message wasn't long. She knew there were always other options than the mages at the tower - blood magic from Jowan or killing Connor. She put one arm around Ellyn's shoulder. "What do you want to do?"

"I need templars." Her expression was determined. "I'm not going to kill that little boy, and if I'm linked with that blood mage again in some ritual, the Chantry will probably hunt the lot of us."

"If you are unwilling to kill the abomination, we can do this without you." Sten spoke up for the first time since they left Haven. His eyes were hard. "If the mages in the tower have turned into abominations, we cannot seek their aid."

"They're not ALL abominations!" Ellyn wrung her hands desperately, rolling the note into a ball. "I can't decide this on my own. Let's go to Redcliffe castle."

Time stood still at Redcliffe castle. Isode and Bann Teagan were in the great hall with the blood mage Jowan. Ellyn went into the hallway and checked her wards - they would hold, she decided, and hoped Connor had enough food - before she spoke to any of them.

"There has been an … incident at the Circle Tower." Ellyn bit back the tears as part of her wanted to scream 'incident' was definitely an understatement for annulment, "we might not be able to get the mages to help us. First Enchanter Irving will give me aid should I ask, but if I want to have any chance to save them...Connor is your son, Lady Isode. I cannot link myself to blood magic," she shot a quick, accusatory glance at Jowan, "unless I want the Chantry to send me to Aeonar. If I cannot save the mages, you wil lhave to allow me to kill Connor."

"No! Please no, you cannot ask me that!" Arlessa Isode was hysterical.

"I have the sacred ashes with me." Ellyn bit her lip, knowing that this might be the quickest option, though not an appealing one. "Believe me, Lady Isode, when I say that this is the last thing I want to do. It is up to you - we can do this right now and your husband will be awake today, or I can go to the Tower and try to save the mages. If I die, the wards on the doors here will disappear and the demon inside Connor will kill you all."

"If you go," Jowan interrupted. "I will watch over Connor. If he starts summoning shades again, I will stop him." A mere hint of a smile here. "I owe you that much."

"Thank you, Jowan." Ellyn gave just a curt nod to Jowan and turned to Bann Teagan. "Do you have authority over the templars here in Redcliffe?"

"No, I do not. I could send Ser Perth with you, if you require knights."

"I have to speak to the Revered Mother, then?" Ellyn's voice was full of trepidation. The Chantry was not accustomed to granting the requests of mages - even ones who just saved an entire village of people.

"I'm afraid so."

Ellyn felt a hand on her shoulder, soft and reassuring. "I can speak to the Revered Mother for you. I was a Lay Sister in Lothering; maybe she'll agree to send the templars with us if I make the request."

Ellyn and Morrigan sat on the Chantry steps while Leliana went inside to talk to the Revered Mother. Usually, this was forbidden. Right now all the templars that were still alive were inside the chantry so no one was there to shoo them off. "I'm beginning to think that this is a very bad idea."

Morrigan's eyebrows shot up. "Now why would you say that?"

"Two mages asking a bunch of templars to go to the Circle Tower to save more mages. Let's go ask some cats to save some mice next!"

"A little late to change your mind, I'm afraid. She's already in there."

At that, the chantry doors opened. "No sitting on the steps. I thought I only had to tell children that..." Knight Commander Harrith regarded the two mages with a wolf's smile. Morrigan suddenly wished she was wearing Circle robes like Ellyn instead of the scant draping of cloth she had on. "I overheard your companion asking the Revered Mother for the templars' aid."

"Yes, she is," Ellyn tilted her head and smiled back, all sweet and lovely. Morrigan made a face. "Do you object to the idea?"

"We owe you our lives. As Knight Commander, I cannot personally go with you -" Coward, thought Morrigan, "but sending a contingent of templars is the least I can do."

"Will they be volunteers? I don't want to take anyone who isn't willing to act under the command of a mage." Ellyn kept the smile but allowed a hint of skepticism to slip into her voice.

"They were under your command during the siege here in Redcliffe, Warden. The templars here have every confidence in your ability to lead."

"I thank you, Knight Commander." Ellyn gave a little bow just as the doors opened again and Leliana emerged.

"The Revered Mother has given permission for the templars to lend us their aid."

We will be quite a sight, Ellyn thought as they left the village of Redcliffe. A Circle Mage with a Marbari, an apostate, a chantry sister, a Qunari and six templars.

She couldn't wait to see the look on Greagoir's face.


	6. Better to Have Loved and Lost

1

Lake Calenhad always made Ellyn a tad nervous.

For one, it was cold even in the summer. For two, Ellyn didn't know the first thing about swimming. Swimming in cold water had to be the most daunting thing she could ever imagine. After spending two months as a Grey Warden, she could imagine a lot, and she would still rather fight an ogre all on her own than swim in Lake Calenhad.

Anders once offered to teach her, but she was too shy to do so in her small clothes. Circle robes were long and heavy and not made for movement, so that was out of the question as well. He once told a tall tale of how he swam across the lake to escape, but Ellyn knew better. He probably made an ice floe in the water and pushed across the lake on it like a raft. With a few potent lyrium potions, he could probably Cone of Cold his way all the way across the lake, walking behind it as he dispensed the spells.

Swim across Lake Calenhad? Not likely. Especially not tonight.

The wind had picked up overnight, the waves were high, and the clouds promised rain ahead. She recognized Carroll at the docks as soon as they crested the hill. She was half hoping to see someone she knew well, but Carroll was infamous. Infamous for being a total fool.

"Ooh, our little princess is back!" Ellyn groaned. Now the rest of her companions were looking at her with their eyebrows all up.

"Little princess?" Leliana let out a soft giggle. "Oh I can totally see that."

"Don't encourage him, Leliana." Ellyn kept her stature straight, all business. "I brought reinforcements. Knight Commander Greagoir did send for reinforcements, yes? That would be us."

The templars followed behind her in formation, helmed and anonymous. It was a lie, but Ellyn hoped it was a plausible one. If Greagoir sent for the Right of Annulment, most of the templars were probably sealed in the tower as well; to carry out the Right he would need more templars. Thankfully, Carroll did not argue the point.

She just wished the man would just be quiet as he rowed them across.

"So you didn't know that she was our little princess, huh?" He just went on and on. "She's had special treatment since she was brought to us. She even had her own room while all the other mages slept in the dormitories."

"Well, she is a very special girl. Very pretty too." Leliana was egging him on for more juicy gossip. Ellyn had a sudden, satisfying image of Carroll falling into the bottom of the lake, heavy plate mail and all.

"I know, eh? All the new recruits got all nervous when they see her for the first time. She had her own personal guard, though, so nobody's allowed to talk to her. She had private tutors instead of classes with the other apprentices, and I heard she started food fights in the mess hall more than once and wasn't ever reprimanded."

Sten let out a grunt that sounded suspiciously like a chuckle. Morrigan snickered openly. "Well, that explains a lot."

"But there was this one templar that she was making eyes with -"

"Ser Carroll," this she was not about to allow. "You do understand that a mage and a templar fraternizing is forbidden and that you're making a dangerous … suggestion," Ellyn tried her best to look threatening, which wasn't very, but she hoped the words were enough, "that I was doing such a thing? Would you care to take it up with the Knight Commander?"

"Too late for that," Carroll shrugged nonchalantly, his tone much too casual. "I think Cullen's sealed up with the mages in the tower."

Ellyn felt an urge to leap across the boat and strangle him. She stared down into her lap and a hush fell upon everyone in the boat. Except for Carroll. He blabbered on.

Leliana put one finger in front of her lips and tipped her chin to Carroll for quiet, her eyes suggesting favors if her command obeyed. With her other hand she covered Ellyn's hands, which were balled into fists.

The rest of the ride passed in silence.

2

Cullen knew that Ellyn was an abomination. _Ellyn is an abomination_. He recited it to himself like a mantra, while visions of her tormented him just out of reach. It was just torture, he knew. He was trained to endure pain, should it came to capture, but not like this. Not like this.

He met her three years ago. Stepping off the little boat that carried passengers between the docks and Kinloch Hold, he spied Ellyn digging elfroot in the herb garden at the foot of the tower. She was wearing blue apprentice robes and sitting in the dirt. When she noticed that he was staring at her, she raised a hand to wipe her brow with a muddy hand, smearing a line onto her forehead. When she smiled, her eyes lit up with a childlike innocence that he had never seen. Just as quickly, she returned to her task as if the moment had not happen at all.

The moment happened for Cullen. He was briefed by the Knight Commander and assigned to a bed in the templars' quarters on the fourth floor. By the time he reached it and put away his things, his cheeks were still flaming red, which looked ridiculous and the colour almost matched that of his hair.

He wondered then, if she wasn't so much smiling at him as laughing at him.

These moments would occur again and again. He was stationed in the apprentice quarters' hallway, and each time she walked by him she seemed to cast her glance his way. He would follow her with his eyes until she was out of sight, and she always knew it was him - even when he had a helm on.

His knew that it was wrong; mages and templars were not forbidden to marry, but never with one another. Especially not when templars were well aware that every mage was a breath from being a monster.

However hard he tried, he could not imagine Ellyn that way. Other mages were rumoured to be promiscuous and all sorts of terrible things, never Ellyn. Other mages were not like Ellyn. She was special, pure and beautiful, a little princess. Sometimes he imagined her to be his princess.

Then came the night when she was attacked and Anders dragged him from his post to 'rescue' her. There it was - she was an abomination, the proof that he needed to see these past three years, and he knew that his duty required him to run her through, but he could not. The great sword was strapped on his back and he couldn't think of reaching for it. So instead he ran away.

The sound of his own boots on the stones sounded like laughter echoing through the halls. By the time he roused the Knight Commander and the First Enchanter, babbling on how Ellyn had turned into an abomination, they returned only to find Ellyn covered in blood, sobbing. Cullen never heard a sound so heartbreaking as that of her crying.

_Don't you wish you could have been her hero instead?_

_What would you give to go back and be the one to save her instead of that Anders?_

_What would you give to be just a man, her just a woman, meeting in Denerim and starting a family?_

_What would you give..._

Ellyn's arms wound around him and she was whispering in his ear, smelling of fresh earth and herbs, her hair draping across him and her breath tickling his skin, and he knew that this could never be and so he screamed, "be gone!" And he was left alone again in his cage.

When she left the tower, he thought that he could forget her. He could not miss something he never possessed.

These demons were giving him bits and pieces of her, memories of her twisted so that he could have her. They showed her how she loved him, then they took her away over and over again.

While the silence lasted, he wondered when he last ate, and last he took his lyrium. The lack of lyrium was jumbling his memories, demons or not. He was nearly certain that he wanted everything to just … end.

3

Cleansing aura. Heroic aura. Ellyn prepared herself as she ascended the steps of Kinloch Hold. She wanted to recite the chant, say _Maker give me strength_, but even that wasn't going to help her.

Alistair had never seen Ellyn so terrified. He spent the past two months watching her. He knew every one of her little poses for each of her little moods, and she carried herself now like she was going to a battle that involved multiple ogres and high dragons. He saw her looking left and right, and her eyes going desperate, fright settling in, then a dead calm that she always put on just before everything fell to pieces and they get rushed.

"Where is Ser Clara?" Her voice came out in a near screech.

"She is in the tower." Ser Greagoir was cold, and strict usually, but now he looked as if he was almost sorry he sealed the doors. Almost. "I see that you received Alistair's message."

"I'm going in." She marched ahead, giving only the briefest of glances to Alistair.

"I have called for the Right of Annulment," Greagoir stepped back and blocked her way. "The doors are sealed. No one is going in, and no one is coming out until reinforcements arrives and we carry out the annulment."

"You can't mean that every one of them have turned into abominations! What about the templars that are still in there?"

"We do what we must, Warden." Greagoir squared his jaw, determined.

"What will it take for you to not kill everyone inside the tower?" _Those are my words do not use my words against me._ "Just tell me what I have to do!"

"Fine. But you do know that this is a suicide mission. The tower is overrun by demons. If you go in, I will seal the doors behind you and unless all the mages are dead or the First Enchanter is brought to the door, they will not be opened again." Greagoir sounded tired and exasperated. "If the First Enchanter declare the tower safe, then I will recall the Right of Annulment. Otherwise..." He left the rest unsaid.

"I will bring back the First Enchanter." Ellyn turned to the templars she brought with her. "You heard what he said. We'll go in there and find the First Enchanter. You don't have to come with me."

The templars nodded their assent, and one of them, helmed and nameless, stepped forward. "We knew the risks when we left Redcliffe with you, Warden."

Ellyn turned to her companions. "It's best if you don't all come with me...in case I don't come back. Alistair, you stay here. I'll take Fleur and Leliana."

"What? No!" Alistair felt blood creeping all the way up to his head. "You're going to take the dog instead of me?"

"Alistair, be reasonable. There are only two of us, and Ferelden needs at least one Warden to stop the Blight."

"Then we will both go in, and both come back." Alistair stood in front of the seals, blocking her way. "I know how you fight and I know how best to protect you. Besides, I'm in the way! You can't go in there without me."

Ellyn was tempted to cast a glyph on the floor and bounce him out of her way, but thought better. Templar. "This isn't your fight."

"If it's your fight, it's mine." He locked his gaze to hers, unrelenting.

Greagoir opened the sealed doors behind him, and Alistair led the way in. The doors closed with a loud bang behind them. "Wow, that really hit home the finality of it all."

Ellyn let out a long sigh. This wasn't how she wanted to come home. She expected things to deteriorate the moment she left, but two months? The hallways were littered with bodies - templars, mages, abominations, ashes of shades. This was much worse than she thought it could be. "Leliana, have you ever fought an abomination? Alistair?" 

"Are they anything like darkspawn?" Leliana unslung her bow and readied an arrow.

"If darkspawn are bigger, uglier, uses magic, and summons shades, then sure." Ellyn answered by readying her staff and adding heroic offence to the list of auras surrounding them. "I saw one when I was a kid and I still get nightmares about it."

"Lovely." Alistair took up guard in front of Ellyn, and she took two steps and took the post in front of him.

"Not today. You'll have to let me. I can sense demons like you can sense darkspawn."

"So … anything else I should know?" Alistair had his one-eyebrow-up inquisitive face on. "I was trained as a templar, but I've never fought an abomination either."

"If you see one of these," Ellyn pointed to a dead abomination on the floor, "kill it. If you see demons or shades - which are both pretty obvious - kill it. If you see a mage casting a spell at you, drain his mana. He could just be defending himself. If a mage is slashing his wrists, kill him. Templars may also attack us here if they were made thralls. Be on the lookout."

"Slashing his wrists?" Now it was Leliana with the inquisitive face. "What do you mean? Killing himself?"

"Blood magic," Ellyn explained. "If you don't stop a blood mage right away, he could have us all killing each other. So if we see blood mages, we don't ask questions." With six templars following, Ellyn was not about to take a single misstep. Everything had to be done by the book. She could feel their nervousness turn to assent behind her. They agreed. Of course they agreed - it was pure Chantry propaganda.

One blood mage might be able to control one thrall at a time, but their dangers came in the form of their blood wound spell which boiled the blood in your veins, but only when within range. Most templars never allowed themselves to get that close to one. An arrow killed them just as easily as valiant swordplay.

Ellyn extended her aura outward, picking out all the signs of life around her. Children. She motioned to the rest of the party to stand down, then stepped forward into the hall. There were the little apprentices, and something familiar and spiritual.

"Ellyn?" It was Wynne, one of the senior enchanters. There was something louder, brighter mingling with her voice. Faith? "What are you doing here?"

Ellyn was about to ask her about the spiritual presence before remembering the templars behind her. If her suspicions were right - that Wynne was just as possessed as she was, if not more so - they would cut her down just as quickly. "I'm here to see First Enchanter Irving."

Wynne glanced at the templars. Her staff was gripped as if she was ready to fight them if she must, "are they here for the Right of Annulment then?"

"No. They came with me from Redcliffe. I thought I might need them to deal with the abominations. Alistair's note mentioned them and I came here as quickly as I can."

"Did Greagoir send for the Right of Annulment?"

"He did. He let me in here on condition that I find the First Enchanter. If I find him, he'll recall the Right." Ellyn spared a quick look at the door to the cellar. The seals were still up. Good. "I'm guessing Uldred came back and summoned a pride demon."

Wynne was taken aback. "Well, Uldred is here. He was attempting to convince Irving that the Grey Wardens betrayed King Cailan and we should ally with Loghain. I don't know anything about a pride demon."

"I sensed it in Ostagar. There was a pride demon hovering around Uldred, just waiting to get through." Ellyn tapped the side of her head. "Why he thought he could control something as powerful as pride, I have no idea."

"And you didn't say anything?" Alistair leaned in and asked. The accusing tone was unmistakable.

"So he could summon it right there in front of King Cailan and kill us all before the templars get there? No. Besides, he might have died in the battle later." She was counting on that. "We don't have time for this right now. I..."

"Alistair, this is her family." Leliana placed one hand on Ellyn's back and stepped up next to her. "Now is not the time."

"Right. Look. I'm sorry. That was … stupid." Alistair reached out and took Ellyn's hand in his. Her head snapped up in surprise. "Listen. I'm your side, okay? You've been trying to save my family, I'll try my best to help you save yours."

4

It was a very large hall.

The great table were laden with food and ale. There was a suckling pig with an apple in its mouth, roast goose, platters of potatoes and vegetables. Torches lined the halls and the hearth in the center of the room - with yet another animal roasting on it, boar maybe? - heated up the entire room. This was the Anderfels, one of the great halls in Weisshaupt Fortress.

There were so many of them. The Grey Wardens. "Three cheers to the Warden who ended the blight!"

"To Alistair!" And they all raised their mugs to him, shouting his name. Duncan flashed him a great big smile at the head of the table and Alistair downed his ale, feeling the warmth trickling outwards.

The men were trying to out drink this one bald Grey Warden in the room with a red beard, whose name he could not remember. He was in Ostagar though. It looked familiar.

Ostagar. This place looked eerily like Ostagar. The jutting columns and the broken arches, the Tower of Ishal in the distance. Hmm. Where was that girl he met in Ostagar? The one with the staff?

She was beautiful. Breathtaking. She probably didn't want to hang out with all these men. He wanted to ask Duncan about her, but had a sinking feeling that Duncan shouldn't be here, while Ellyn should be, and a flash of a thought that maybe Duncan was dead.

Maybe they were all dead and this was the void. Were there parties and ale in the void?

He should really get up and look for - Ellyn. That was it. Her name was Ellyn, and she was sweet and nice and she laughed at his jokes. She wouldn't belong in a fortress like this with all these drunken men, so she probably ran off. Maybe she was lost. Maybe he should look for her.

"Where are you going, Alistair?" Duncan called across the table when he pushed away to get up. Everyone else was looking at him too. Weird. Alistair thought they were all drunk and some of them were already half asleep on the table. Guess not.

"I'm going to go look for Ellyn. She's probably lost."

"Oh, I wouldn't worry about her. She's perfectly capable." Duncan set his mug on the table and gestured to the wardens. "This is your celebration, Alistair. You should stay. You're the one who killed the Archdemon yourself."

Did he? What did an archdemon look like? How did he kill it? Alistair couldn't recall. He really should find Ellyn. "If I killed the Archdemon, I would have done it with her help, so I really should find her..." He began to walk away and the Grey Wardens were looking different, bursting at the seams with a dark, red glow. Duncan had his weapon out and walked slowly, purposefully toward him.

5

"Ellyn! Breakfast is ready!"

No. She hated mornings ever so much.

"Ellyn!"

Sunlight leaked through the edges of the shutters, hitting her eyes. Ellyn flinched a little. Five more minutes ...

"Wake up, sleepyhead!" The covers were pulled away from her in a flash. Argh. Cold. She rubbed at her eyes and yawned, and she remembered her arms longer in her dreams. She was grown up. When she swung her legs over the side of the bed, they didn't reach the floor.

Anders was peering at her, folding the blankets. She remembered him older in her dreams, too. "Mom made breakfast. Come on." He took her hand, half dragging her to the living room as she tried hard to keep her eyes open, stumbling. There was the smell of warm milk and fried eggs, a hint of cinnamon with apples, perhaps on porridge.

Ellyn slid onto a stool in front of the dining table, which was no more than a plank of wood on some nailed together slats. All the furniture were rough and wooden, unpolished. She turned her sleepy eyes to the woman by the stove, who was humming to herself, and wondered briefly where her armour was.

Why would mother be wearing armour? The thought slipped away like water through her fingers. Breakfast. It was so lovely here, but unfamiliar. Strange.

"Good morning, sweetheart." A bowl was slipped in front of her, with milk porridge, apples and shavings of cinnamon. The smell was intoxicating and sweet. "Your brother's going to teach you how to swim today, so I've made some extra food for your picnic. Don't forget to take it before you go."

Ellyn brushed her hand across the table and felt the grains of the wood beneath her hand. It was smooth. It looked rough and unpolished but it was smooth. Ah. She wanted to stay, to have a family who loved her and never, ever grow up and kill things and be covered in blood.

This was the self she left behind. Please, just five more minutes …

"These are not my memories. I never had a mother or lived in a cottage, or have a real brother who wanted to teach me how to swim." Ellyn spoke, apparently to her hands on the table. "Anders told me about these things. I don't even know what a rough table feels like. You're not my mother. You're a templar. You can't be my mother. You told me so."

She pushed with her mind, staggering them both. The cottage disappeared and there was nothing, nothing left except the pale white milky skies and light green grass of the Fade. She was bigger now, nearly eighteen in her mage robes. Alone

Ellyn felt her legs wobble beneath her and then she was looking up into that false sky, grieving for the family she lost that she never truly had. Better to have loved and lost, some said.

It was a lovely dream.


	7. Wants and Wishes

1

"Alistair! It's a demon!" Ellyn was running as fast as she could over the halls and down the steps into the great hall that was more Ostagar than Weisshaupt. She could see he was being swarmed, even at a distance.

Ellyn stretched out her hands, called on a glyph of repulsion and drew it under him, adding a paralyze spell as soon as she saw the glow from under his feet. The magic moved outward, paralyzing the shades. While they were still stunned, she ran to his side and plastered herself against his back.

For a split second, Alistair wished he wasn't wearing plate mail. "Great, we're both surrounded. Now what?"

"They can't get inside the glyph, but if we get out of it we're both dead." She was a little too close. He must have been imagining that he could feel her warmth through the heavy plate mail. "I'm standing as close to the middle of it as I can, since you should be noticing that I'm not wearing any armour."

Alistair took the hint and backed off to the edge of the glyph. The shades in the shapes of Grey Wardens were beginning to stir, eyeing them hungrily. "I can't fight them all, you know. I'm not invincible."

"The only one you have to kill is the one that looks like Duncan. That's the demon who summoned the shades." Ellyn drew a warding glyph under him, "he's not Duncan. It's a demon."

"Aren't demons women?" Alistair read about them before in his studies as a templar. They had breasts, purple skin and were usually mostly naked. This one looked like an older man with a beard.

"You're thinking about desire demons. This one is sloth." The shades were creeping in toward her, swords out, and the glyph under her was beginning to fade. "Stop asking questions and just kill it!"

Alistair rushed at 'Duncan' with his shield out, ramming him to the ground, and with one quick motion - his eyes closed, the thought of killing Duncan was hard to reconcile, demon or not - he pushed his sword down hard through chain mail. When he opened his eyes again, the sword was stabbing into the ground at nothing, and all the shades were gone.

"Thank the Maker." He mumbled to himself. "Now what?"

"Now I need to sense a way out. Give me a minute." Ellyn closed her eyes and felt the fabric of the Fade. The Fade was shaped by spirits, and they were not the best of craftsmen. There were seams and holes, and always with doors they built in, because no one understood the meaning of games better than spirits. They loved games. There was always one single exit, and there was always a way to get to it. It existed as hope for ones trapped in the Fade.

Demons would be powerless if the trapped souls were not able to dream of freedom.

A mage was trained to find these ways out, and those who did not know how by their harrowing failed their test and perished. Ellyn technically passed her harrowing by all appearances, but truth was, this was the first time she had to personally brave the Fade. She brought six templars with her - seven, if one counted Alistair as well - and any of them could be watching. Calling on Mythal was not an option, as both her voice and appearance gave her away, but that sure would make things so much easier.

"Down the hallway, through a small hall closet, through a disused lavatory door labelled 'beware of giant rats?'" Ellyn had to laugh. Spirits did have a sense of humour.

"It's always about the giant rats. An adventure is not complete without giant rats. Do you think they'll lead us to giant wheels of cheese?" Alistair laughed with her and it occurred to him that it had been two months since they truly laughed together. He offered his arm. "Shall we?"

They stumbled through the door and didn't find any giant rats. Instead, they found themselves back in the Circle Tower. Ellyn reached out and touched the stone. It felt real enough, but one could never tell with the Fade. "We're probably still in the Fade."

"You're not sure?"

"The only thing you can trust in the Fade is yourself, Alistair. Remember that, in case we get separated again." They were in the senior enchanters quarters. Ellyn took in the sight of it all - more dead bodies. They were real enough.

Alistair pointed ahead at a templar who was standing up, unlike the rest. "Is that one of ours?" To his astonishment, Ellyn let go of his arm and ran.

"Cullen!" Ellyn stopped in front of the templar. He looked a bit haggard and tired, but in much better condition than everyone else on this floor. "Do you need healing?"

"No, I … I'm fine." Cullen took a step forward, wincing a little at the pain in one leg. "There are blood mages on the floor above. I escaped."

"Have you seen Ser Clara?"

"She was just ahead of me. I think she went down the stairs. You need to get out of here … it's dangerous. I heard that the Knight Commander was going to seal off the tower."

Alistair felt himself rooted to the end of the hallway, watching them. The way her eyes went soft at the sight of him, the familiarity with which he spoke to her, and he wanted so to grab her and run. _Maybe this is why she never paid attention to me._ He knew there might have been someone else, but this was just too fortuitous for her. An entire tower of dead templars, and the only one alive was the one she wanted? Suspicious.

He wanted to warn her and remind her of what she just told him, but the hallway between them was infinite. When he walked forward, he walked in place. When he spoke, the sound reverberated between his ears and travelled nowhere.

"They're all dead. There's no one here left to save. Come with me." Cullen reached out and held onto her shoulders. "Three years, Ellyn. Three years of wishing I could be with you. We can run away and no one need know who we are …"

In one end of an infinite hallway, Alistair watched as Cullen leaned in to kiss her. He watched as Ellyn reached out with one hand to draw a glyph on the ground. He watched as 'Cullen' flew across the room, hit the wall and slid down, changing as he did so.

"How dare you use him against me." Alistair added 'seethingly angry' to the list of Ellyn expressions he knew. "Cullen would never say that. He's responsible. And he has a sense of duty. He has honor. And you have none." Ellyn punctuated each of her accusations with a debilitating spell.

The hallway was passable again. Alistair closed their distance and plunged his sword into the weakened desire demon. "Boyfriend?"

"No." Ellyn gave him a levelled look. "Templar. A very good templar."

"Well, he sure looked like a boyfriend to me." He kept his tone casual. Just curious.

"I'm a mage, Alistair. He's a templar." Ellyn had a wistful look in her eyes, "it can never be."

"So? What's the plan?" Her tone definitely said 'drop it' so he dropped it.

"We're still in the Fade. The longer we stay, the weaker we get in the real world. Let's try to get out of here alive."

2

Wynne enjoyed teaching the apprentices.

They came to her all very young. She was not always so good at this, but years of experience taught her how to be patient with her students. She never snapped, never hurried, and she was so kind to all of these children.

Creation classes were her favorite. It was a gentle discipline; the art of healing and protective glyphs, of defense bolstering auras. Students who specialized in it often had the kind of personality that reflected the traits of the spells. They were wonderful to work with.

It was a horrible thing to have watched them die.

That never happened though, did it? After all, they were all here, sitting in front of her, listening to her lecture with smiles on their faces. The faces with a red, sinister glow under them, powered by blood magic...

_Oh, very well_. Wynne had quite enough of the spirit's prodding. She wanted so to stay and just enjoy this for a little while, this almost harmless play of make believe. Spirit healers were unable to stay in charades like these for long, however. They were too aware of the demons behind the illusions.

Stonefist hit one of the students square in the chest, knocking the wind out of him. A demon materialized from its form, turning into smoke as it rose into the air.

"Good of you to join us," Wynne turned to Alistair and Ellyn, who were just walking into her class. "But I'm afraid you're a little late."

"Mages." Alistair stuck out his tongue at Wynne, "they think they're so clever."

"We are." Ellyn made a face, "who was having a party in Weisshaupt again?"

"I was going to leave anyway. But somebody has the hots for a templar," Alistair gave Ellyn an exaggerated frown, stretching out the word 'templar,' "but not this templar. My one feeling is hurt."

"Quiet."

"Children." Wynne stepped in. "Let's stop bickering with each other. Where's Leliana?"

Leliana was in the Chantry, praying. Alistair didn't wait this time. He simply walked up to the 'Revered Mother' and stabbed her in the back with a long sword. Leliana screamed and lunged at him, but by the time he pushed her off of him, the demon was smouldering on the ground.

"Oh. Wow. I can't believe I was that easily fooled." Leliana blinked rapidly as her chantry robe drifted into leather armour, and she patted it just to make sure it was real. "I mean, I'm in a stone tower and the Revered Mother was the one from Lothering."

"We want to be fooled, Leliana. It's the nature of the illusions." Ellyn gave her a little pat on the back. "Let's go find that sloth demon and get out of here."

3

Wounds sustained in the Fade were not carried over to the real world. There might be phantom aches where pain seem to snap at him from nothing, but they were like a stitch one sometimes received from running after a meal. They meant nothing and did not last.

Of course, that also meant that healing magic did not make this phantom pain go away. Alistair laid on the ground next to a rotting corpse of an abomination, and thought of the many other things he would rather be doing. Ellyn explained that the ache would go away eventually, but right now, it bloody hurt.

The battle was a long one, and it was made harder by the fact that they had two healers, one of which couldn't defend herself if you handed her a shield the size of a door. She wasn't hurt, of course. Alistair took all her hits. _Ow_.

Ellyn stacked her auras again, and once the pain was gone - the ache was there, but it was bearable - they moved on. The other templars slept through the whole thing and did not speak of it once they were up. _Probably really shameful dreams. Consorting with mages and such_.

That was petty. She was a beautiful girl, living in a tower full of men. Of course she had history with men. If she didn't … well, if she didn't she would be dating Leliana. The two were close. He had a mental image of them together and shook it off. No. Definitely not. Ellyn didn't seem like the kind of girl to have any kind of history. Matter of fact, she was the kind of girl that radiated historylessness. Was that a word? Historylessness?

Alistair really wanted to ask about this Cullen, but it was probably a bad time. Yes, locked inside a tower with blood mages and abominations was definitely a bad time, wasn't it? Curiosity could wait.

4

"She's close by, isn't she?"

"Over there." Mythal pointed to a distant island. Distances were hard to judge in the fade; the black city could be seen from anywhere, but could be reached from nowhere. This island was either a week's walk or a stone's throw away. It looked an awful lot like Kinloch Hold.

"A copy of the Circle Tower?" Anders stared out over the cliff face that bounded their part of the Fade. "Let me guess. Fade templars torturing fade mages with fade feathers and fluffy restraints?"

"Ellyn may be in danger."

"Is she being tortured with fluffy fade feathers by a desire demon dressed up as Cullen? Good. That girl needs to get out more." He returned his concentration to the apples he was juggling, or more precisely, learning to juggle.

"I'm saying she is in danger. As in I'm not there to help her."

Anders dropped the apples. They floated an inch above the grass. "That's not funny."

"It wasn't a joke."

"So stop sitting here wasting time with me and go help her! What's wrong with you?"

"There are seven templars with her. If I don't help her, she may die. If I do help her, she will most surely die." Mythal had not changed her expression at all. Anders wasn't sure it was concern or self-preservation that drove her. "Possible death by demons or definite death by templars. What would you have me do?"

Anders threw up his hands. "How should I know? If she dies, I'm stuck here forever. I'm not exactly unbiased here."

"Don't you care what happens to her? I noticed how you just shifted the topic to yourself."

"I'm vain, or haven't you noticed already?" Anders ran his fingers through his hair, as if to prove a point.

"You did not answer my question. What would you have me do?"

"Dead is dead, spirit. If you don't do anything, those templars are there to protect her, right? I'm sure that's the only reason she'd be travelling with them."

5

Ellyn was the perfect kind of daughter. She was sweet, obedient, and she loved getting her hair brushed. She would tip her head like so instead of crying out in pain like other little girls when there was a snag. Clara would work out the knot carefully so as not to hurt her.

She was glad to have left the Templar Order so long ago to raise these children.

Her husband was at work. The pounding of hammers outside reminded her that he was a smith; a safe profession, with no real danger hanging over them all the time. Not like being a templar at all.

She had time to do some baking this afternoon. Ellyn loved her breads with raisins, Anders probably wanted the ones with the cinnamon sugar again, and his clothes needed mending. The boy was always running about putting holes in the things he wore.

What was she going to do with that troublesome child? He was skipping school again, she knew, but no amount of scolding seemed to work, not even when she told of how much Ellyn missed him when he was gone. Always making promises he couldn't keep, that boy.

Ellyn sat reading a picture book at the dining table, and every so often she looked up to give her mother a smile. What a sweet girl. "Didn't you say you were going to go fishing with your brother today?"

"No, mama. He's busy with some friends." Little Ellyn flipped a page. Light streamed through the window, glinting off her long golden lashes. "They think he's too old to be playing with me."

"I'll have to talk to Anders about keeping promises. He's always doing this to you." Clara busied herself kneading dough. It was almost enough to set to rise. "Are you okay about not going fishing?"

"Yes, mama. I'd rather stay here with you," and she said this all nice and prim, her mouth curling in one corner with a smile.

"You're cute to say that, sweetheart." Clara thought she was never so happy in the Order. There might be no glory in this life, but it was safe, and there was love.

"Will you stay with me forever, mama?"

"Of course, darling. I'll be with you as long as you want me." Clara meant every word. She wanted to treasure every moment with her daughter. One day, she would grow up and fall in love and not want mother anymore.

Clara heard the sound of a large oaken door opening; a familiar sound, from a lifetime away. Doors in the Circle Tower sounded like that. She turned to look at the door, a plain cottage door that squeaked on its hinges, and saw that it was closed. She was just hearing things. It happened a lot. It took her a while to overcome her addiction to lyrium, and she still suffered from some side effects. Earlier on she thought she heard screams, but there was nothing then either.

There came the sound of an argument, and her little daughter was by the door, talking to a group of strangers, some of whom were templars. Had the Order changed their minds about letting her resign? The discussion became heated and they began yelling and her daughter turned with her face all unhappy, "mama, they're here to take me away! They said that I'm a mage and I have to go with them! Help me, mama!"

A man standing at the head of the group wearing plate mail drew his sword, and a blond woman in front of them, with a staff in her hand, held his arm. She looked exceedingly familiar. Maybe she was a mage in the tower she used to guard. She was trying to stop this man from taking her daughter - of course, she was a mage, she wanted freedom for little mage children, did she not?

"No one is taking my daughter!" Clara fought against her templar instincts, the ones they hammered into her about mage children belonging in the Circle. She knew it was true, but this was her daughter and she would fight these templars, fight them, and run away with her little Ellyn. She needed a distraction.

The blond haired woman and the man with the sword was fighting and Clara took a chance. She picked up the sword she always kept by the stove, her old templar sword that was the memento from her old life. She took it and ran toward the door into the middle of the group, with her voice she bid her little daughter to _run, out the back door, out anywhere, your mother would be meeting you later _…

As the sword plunged into the blond haired woman, she locked her eyes with Clara, and there was recognition there, a lifetime of wants and wishes. A voice seemed to speak to her from an old memory, one she had not recalled in years. _Are you going to be my mama?_

She heard a wail from the man beside her, a murderous intent rose in his eyes, his sword flashed across her peripheral vision and Clara saw the glint but felt nothing, only that the sound of her voice asking her daughter to run was silenced.

And Ser Clara dreamt no more.


	8. Abominations

1

Ellyn felt hot blood splashing onto her face and Alistair's arm catching her as she fell. There was pain spreading from her abdomen and she knew she was injured. She tried to raise her hand to start a healing spell, but her fingers were not listening to her.

The edges of her vision were getting blurry; she saw the anguish on Alistair's face, Leliana's shocked and concerned expression, and she wanted to tell them _no, don't worry, it's not my blood that's all over my face_, but her mouth wasn't working either. It was Ser Clara's blood, _oh Maker it was her blood_, and it was all over Ellyn's face, in her hair, in her eyes, her vision tinted with red.

She thought there might be more pain, but there wasn't. There was only a searing heat that came from her middle and the cold that was everywhere else. She saw that her arms and her legs were moving in a ceaseless spasm, and she wondered who was making them move. It wasn't her, that was for sure.

There was a memory she had of a room in this very tower where she held Anders in her arms. She mended his bones, knitted his muscles, put all his organs back together, while his arms and legs were moving the same way. She wondered if she was dying, and why it did not hurt anymore.

A hand descended upon her eyes, beyond it she saw their mouths moving but she couldn't hear anything and she was _oh so scared of this darkness, please don't block out the light_.

2

"Alistair, hold her arms still. I'm putting her under. I can't heal her with her moving like that." Alistair shifted his grip so that Ellyn was still, and Wynne readied a sleep spell, casting it gently over her forehead. "Now we need to get that sword out. I'm going to sustain an aura. Leliana, pull the sword out. Do it quickly, straight up. Don't make the wound wider."

Ellyn was looking deathly pale. Leliana froze, knowing that pulling a sword out in this situation could very well kill her. "I know what I'm doing, Leliana. Just pull."

Leliana gritted her teeth, stood over Ellyn, and pulled the sword straight up. A pool of blood immediately began to spread under her body and Leliana very nearly dropped the sword. She flung it to one side and held one of Ellyn's cold hands in her own, willing it to get warmer.

The blood stopped spreading, but now it was the top of her robe that was getting redder. The wound was closed underneath, but the internal bleeding wasn't going to stop. Alistair looked as though he was about to scream.

"I need everyone to get out. Now." Wynne was grim faced and she used the commanding voice she reserved for speaking with the rowdiest of students. "I need to undress her to close the wound. This will be a sickroom for now. Close the door behind you."

"Can I stay and help?" Leliana raise her head and glanced at Wynne, still holding Ellyn's hand.

"I would rather you did not." Wynne was visibly straining. The blue healing glow from her hand winked and wavered.

Leliana stepped out of the room and closed the door. The templars informed Alistair that they would scout the rest of the floor and clear out any abominations, but he was much too shocked to give an answer. She found him sitting outside the now sickroom with his chin over his knees.

She joined him, sitting down on the floor where blood wasn't. Blood was everywhere. "I should have killed that demon the moment I saw it."

"It wasn't your fault, Alistair." Leliana gave his hand a little pat. "Ellyn really wanted to save that templar."

"She's always trying to save everyone." Alistair sighed and covered his head with his hands.

"Ellyn's a very special girl. She's one of the world's very last innocents." Leliana had a knowing smile. "I should know."

"She'd tackle this entire blight on her own without me if she had to, I'm sure. She just … picks up other people's problems and tries to solve them all." He winced, spreading his hands. "Who does that? What am I going to do, Leliana? She's dying. I've seen it before. Nobody recovers from a sword wound like that."

"Was that what you thought when you woke up in Femeth's hut? The time when Ellyn was shot full of arrows?" She tried her best to smile. It was a tentative, scared sort of smile, one used by people comforting each other in waiting rooms of hospitals.

"I guess. But this time it's different." Alistair dropped his voice to a whisper. "I think I love her."

Leliana perked up just a little at his words. "You really should let her know that."

"Fleur said she's afraid of me." Alistair imitated the low growl in his throat, "probably because I'm a templar, come to think of it."

"You're not really a templar though. You were going to be a templar. Doesn't she know that?"

"No, we never really talked about it. She hasn't tried to have a conversation with me since I drained an emissary's mana in battle. She's barked out plenty of commands, but we haven't sat down and talked about anything."

"Then you should talk to her." Leliana tilted her head the way she always did when she knew she was stating the absolutely obvious.

"Coming here," Alistair made a sweeping gesture with his hands, "was weird. I mean, I thought I knew her. She's this amazing tactician who's always deadly calm in the heat of battle. Then I sit in this great room downstairs and heard all about how she was this pampered little princess who got special treatment from everyone." Alistair squinted his eyes. "There's also this Cullen she saw in the Fade."

"Cullen?" Leliana raised an eyebrow and tried not to look too interested.

"Templar boyfriend of hers, I think. She wouldn't admit it though." Alistair spat out the word 'boyfriend' like a curse.

"Forbidden love. Ooh. The plot thickens. I didn't know about it. It's probably not something she can tell anyone." Leliana gave him a look that spoke volumes, most of which was lurid. "If it gets out it could get him expelled from the Order and her executed, you know."

"It's just that I don't know anything about her, and she's completely clueless about … about how I feel about her."

"She's been very sheltered, Alistair. It's part of her charm." Leliana allowed herself a smile, "do you remember Lothering? I asked her if I could come with her and she just shrugged and said 'ooh it'd be fun to have another girl along!' like camping was a slumber party. Or when she saw Sten in his cage and she asked you if she could keep him - like he was a stray cat?"

"Yes, yes I do." He couldn't help but laugh a little at that. Ellyn was so kind that she wasn't able to see evil in other people. A crazy chantry sister and a convicted murderous Qunari gained her trust just like that. "Some people would call that stupid."

"Not us. We know better."

3

"I can't do this alone, Ellyn. I need help. You need to call on your spirit." Wynne leaned down and spoke in her ear. She was trying to keep the wound closed, but the internal bleeding was unstoppable. Wynne swallowed another lyrium potion, keeping her hand over Ellyn's abdomen. She was losing blood almost as fast as Wynne was regenerating it. "Please."

"I've sent the templars away. If you can hear me, save her. There's no one here you need to be afraid of." Wynne whispered. If anyone overheard, it meant death for both of them.

Ellyn's eyes snapped open, white light suffused her body, concentrating on her wound. There was a feeling as of a vortex in the room. Wynne backed away to the door and quickly cast a ward on it.

Suspended in warm, white light, Ellyn levitated off the floor. Her blood and Ser Clara's swirled in a mist around her glowing form, and all Wynne saw for a while was a pink halo around her. When it settled, Ellyn dropped slowly, softly downwards. The blood on the floor was gone, and Ser Clara's body laid dry and desiccated, as if she had been dead for years.

Wynne knelt and checked the wound. It was completely closed over, and there was colour back in her cheeks. Ellyn's eyes fluttered open, and she seemed about to speak. Wynne gestured for silence with a finger in front of her lips, and whispered when she spoke. "I asked your spirit to heal you, Ellyn. It will be suspicious if you wake too soon."

"How's … Ser Clara?" Ellyn asked. Her throat was dry, but there was no pain and she was warm. "Is she alright?"

Wynne shook her head. "I'm sorry, child. There was nothing I could have done. You were close to death yourself."

Ellyn felt her tears flowing down into her hair. She did not dare to cry; her sobbing might bring the templars back to them. There would be time for grief later, she told herself, but not now. There was simply too much they had to do.

"Have some rest." Wynne stroked her hair, ever so gently. "I know how much she meant to you. You were probably the child she dreamt of defending."

"Wynne, you know what I am?" Ellyn reached out to take her hand, and Wynne took it in her own.

"I know. We're both … " Wynne did not even dare to whisper. She mouthed the word. "Abominations."

4

Wynne and Ellyn emerged from the temporary sickroom hours later, greeted by astonished looks and whispers of 'praise Andraste' from the templars. Leliana hugged Wynne and thanked her, then hugged Ellyn so hard she almost pulled her to the floor with murmured prayers.

"I thought I lost you." Alistair crushed her against his armour and kissed her chastely on both cheeks to her astonishment. Leliana tapped him on his gauntlet eventually and led Ellyn away, reprimanding him for being so rough right after her injury.

"You're an amazing healer, Wynne." Leliana gushed. "I was scared."

"Oh, it was a joint effort." Wynne gave Leliana her usual, sweet old lady smile. "Ellyn's a healer as well, remember?"

The templars reported on the situation. There were no more demons on this floor. Every mage they managed to find used blood magic and attacked them on sight. Their mission was looking more like an annulment every minute.

The Templars' Quarters brought more death, when thralls seemed to attack from behind every door they opened. Wynne and Ellyn hung back well out of the way and allowed their companions to take care of most of the fighting. Mages did not fight templars on their own. It would be suicide.

"Do you think we're going to be able to save anyone, Wynne?" Ellyn turned to her when they were nearing the entrance to the harrowing chamber on the very top floor. Hope was growing very thin.

"I've been checking all the mages along the way and I haven't seen Irving yet. There is still hope."

"There is someone here, Warden." One of the templars ahead gave the alert when he opened a door at the end of the hall. "Looks like he's alive."

Ellyn's legs started running of their own accord, and she did not stop running until she was there in front of his blood cage. His eyes were wild, his face haggard, but he was alive. Relief and pity streamed together and she was crying, one hand reaching out to touch the cage, another in front of her mouth to stop the choke that came with her tears.

Alistair and Leliana exchanged a look. Alistair closed his eyes and nodded. Cullen.

"No...not her again." Cullen was raving, trying to look at anything but Ellyn. "No...I can't...I can't resist anymore. I was going to forget her. I love her but she's gone - she's gone! I was going to just … live … and not think about her anymore. Why her? Why keep giving me the one thing I want but can never have?"

It was a deadly admission. The templars in the room shifted in their armour uncomfortably and the room was again filled with silence but for the clink of their plate mail. "Ser Cullen, I'm real."

"I don't believe it. I don't. I don't. Begone, demon! Stop taunting me!" Cullen turned his gaze to her and seemed surprised that she was still here. "Why aren't you leaving me alone?"

"Because I'm not a vision, Ser Cullen. I came back. I'm trying to save the mages." Ellyn touched the cage and drew back as if burned. "Do you know how I can get you out of this cage?"

"Uldred. Uldred started summoning demons and he's been turning all the mages. They're in the harrowing chamber. If you kill Uldred, this cage should disappear." Cullen pushed himself forward, almost touching the barrier. "You have to kill all the mages. They're all abominations by now. They've killed all the templars and …" His voice thinned out, low and quiet, as if it made the fact less real, "I'm the only one left."

"I will kill Uldred." Ellyn leaned as close as she could without hurting herself on the blood cage, "but I cannot do as you ask, Ser Cullen. I will not harm an innocent." She stepped back. Cullen kept mumbling on about blood mages and how everyone should be killed, but she deigned not to listen anymore.

Ellyn wiped away her tears and when her sleeve came away she wore the deadly calm of battle. She turned to the templars and fixed them with a steely gaze, boring through their helms. "He's been without his lyrium since the attacks began. He's delirious with withdrawal. I trust that his words will not leave this room?" There was a pause. They nodded, an agreement of silence. "Good. We're going to fight a pride demon.

I was once told that it takes an army of templars to fight a pride demon. That's probably true. There are six of you, seven including Alistair, and though the rest of us are not templars, we're capable. With my auras, our power is tripled.

You saw what I was able to do in Redcliffe. We have an army. We can do this. Let's go."

5

Fighting Uldred was chaos. If it wasn't for the Litany of Adralla, they would have all died in there, their blood becoming fuel for the pride demon. Ellyn was knocked down twice, but she seemed to not feel the pain at all and kept her auras up until her wounds were healed again; Leliana danced around the edges of the room, loosing enchanted arrows with pinpoint precision; Alistair pushed his templar abilities to the limit until he had no strength left to hold up his shield.

Their unit of templars proved to be instrumental in the fight. Uldred's mana was drained constantly, his spells interrupted, and he found himself surrounded by steel whenever he resorted to melee. Wynne kept the other mages from turning with the Litany of Adralla. In the end, they managed to save all the mages in the Harrowing Chamber.

Alistair looked around afterwards at the carnage and wondered how all that blood came from one single person. Of course, there were already mages and templars killed in that room before, but the pride demon was easily more formidable than an ogre. Ellyn finished healing the last of their wounds; when she looked up from her last patient, their eyes met. For one moment, he saw gratitude, and thought maybe she looked like she was glad to have her own templar guardian.

It was an improvement over fear, anyhow.

"First Enchanter, are you hurt anywhere else?" Ellyn smoothed healing energy over one last cut she saw on his hand, and stacked a heroic aura in place for strength. "The rest of the mages are ready to leave, if you are."

"Ellyn. It seems I am in your debt again." Irving stood with some help. He did not count the days throughout Uldred's torture, but he felt as if he hadn't eaten in a week. "I'm very thankful that you're not telling me 'I told you so.'"

Ellyn fixed him with a mischievous grin, reminiscent of Anders'. "I told you so."

They laughed, tentative, shaken, self-deprecating. Alistair stepped forward and took Wynne's place on the other side of Irving, and step by step guided the First Enchanter down the many flights of stairs to the main doors.

6

"And here we are." Morrigan pushed herself up with her elbows on her bedroll, shooting a glance at Sten. Fleur perked up her ears and whined. "See? You need not have worried."

"I was not worried." Sten stood still as a statue. Ellyn had thought in passing that he would probably make a great templar.

"I can't believe you just slept here in a room full of templars."

"Your fears are not my fears," Morrigan did not look the least bit uncomfortable. "So I'm a smart mouse in a room full of dumb cats. I have my darling Sten to watch over me."

Sten grunted and might have looked even more stern than before.

Ellyn left the Knight Commander and Irving to discuss the state of the Circle. The death toll was high, but they were willing to take whatever victory they were able to get. Greagoir crossed his arms and bowed. "The Circle of Magi is in your debt, Warden."

Alistair and Ellyn presented the Grey Warden Treaty and asked Irving for help with the possessed mage child, Connor. Greagoir intervened, stating that abominations must be killed, but Ellyn used their custody of the blood mage Jowan as a bargaining chip. In the end, even the Knight Commander agreed to their terms. A group of mages would travel with them in the morning to Redcliffe, with whatever templar guards they could spare.

"That went well." Alistair saw Ellyn's expression and decided that might have been the wrong thing to say. "Death and demons and tragedy. Nope. Definitely didn't go well."

"We got what what we came for." Ellyn ran a hand through her hair and found more blood in it. "Do you remember when you were all depressed over Duncan?"

Alistair did not wish to be reminded. "Uh...yes?"

"You've known Duncan for six months. I've known Ser Clara for twelve years. She was like a mother to me." Ellyn held the stubborn expression of one determined not to cry. "I have a feeling that the demon used her memories of me against her."

"I'm sorry," and he was. Alistair was the one to slit her throat.

"Don't be. If it's anyone's fault, it's mine for practically handing them a weapon."

_There she goes again,_ thought Alistair, _blaming herself for everyone else's problems_. "Stop that. A demon killed Ser Clara."

"It is good of you to say that, Alistair." Ellyn bit her lower lip. "If it's alright with you, I think I'm going to stay here tonight."

"Um...with the corpses of blood mages and abominations?" Alistair had a feeling that he was being watched. He looked behind Ellyn and saw Cullen scowling at them by the now open doors. "Ah. Okay. I'll just … um … set up camp with everyone else then. Across the lake. Yeah, that's it."

Ellyn felt a sense of deja vu at Alistair's stuttering, putting a hand up to her mouth to turn a giggle into a cough. Leliana leaned in and whispered something in her ear; she turned beet red, swatted her jokingly across the side of one arm, and turned away.

7

Sunlight filtered softly through the high windows behind a statue of Andraste, candles burning bright at her feet. Cullen trailed one hand along the edges of the wooden pews as he approached, his heart heavy, weighed with imagined sins. The air smelled of incense, wax, old weathered wood; a familiar atmosphere that soothed him in a way that the chapel in the Circle Tower never could.

Ser Cullen knelt with his sword and prayed. He poured out his shame of loving a mage, his fears of blood magic, the days and nights of torture showing him how weak he was, what a failure he was. He feared his desires that echoed those of demons, how they drew out his shame and spread it, like a net, over him, turning him, until he was near breaking.

"Love is not a sin, Ser Cullen." A hand was on his brow, warm but hard as stone. He raised his head from the hilt of his sword, and the statue of Andraste was there in front of him, speaking to him. She was smaller, her countenance resembled that of Ellyn's, though everywhere about her there was a faint white light, and when she spoke the voice that came was soft yet it resonated like a thousand voices speaking at once. "Do you remember what it is that you hate?"

He wanted to tell her that magic was a curse, mages the conduits for demons. He wanted to tell her how his brothers were struck down, made thralls by blood mages. His mouth was open and he attempted words but silence shrouded them. She smoothed out his hair and he felt his thoughts understood, in spite of his inability to articulate them.

_Uldred was right, and wrong. Mages are conduits of both good and evil, as are men. They can welcome the virtues, like love, _and here she seemed to smile, _compassion and valor. There would be no desire, sloth or pride if men did not already possess them. Men blame the demons of the fade for the sins they already commit, but spirits can only imitate, and they learned love from you. It is no sin to love, Ser Cullen. You are not weak; you would sooner allow yourself to die than be broken. _

She sorted his memories, laying the false ones aside and leaving the moments he held dear. Hurried glances in hallways. The one time Ellyn tried to speak to him and he couldn't get his words out, both of them stuttering until Anders pulled her away. The way she looked at him, full of admiration and he did not understand why.

_Protect my children from within and without. That is your task. That is your calling. Arise, Ser Cullen. I have taken away your need for vengeance, for that was your only sin. _She removed her hand from his brow and took each of his hands in hers.

He was surrounded by books. It took him an instant to recognize the library, a much longer moment to realize that the figure sitting cross-legged from him was Ellyn. Her eyes were closed, though light leaked through the fringes of her eyelashes. Her whole person was glowing, and he looked down at his hands in astonishment to see that so was he. His hand twitched involuntarily, mindful of the fact that his skin was touching hers.

In one split second the light was gone. Her eyes opened, and there was concern in her gaze. Concern quickly gave way to relief, and she pulled back her hands with some shyness. "I ... what ..." he wanted to ask her what was going on, but Irving was standing right behind her, the Knight Commander also stood to one side with his sword readied.

"His eyes are clear. The danger has passed." Irving reached down and she seemed glad of the help, as her knees wobbled a little when she tried to stand up.

"I wasn't wounded." Cullen protested while Ser Greagoir pulled him up. He did not remember being cut anywhere during the attack. Greagoir mumbled something about non-sanctioned magic and walked away.

Ellyn and Irving exchanged a look, was it pity or consternation? "You were raving, Ser Cullen. There was madness in your eyes." The First Enchanter smiled at him kindly and patted his back. "You are very lucky. No ordinary healer can do what she just did."

"What was that vision?" It felt real, and he wanted it to be. Cullen was afraid that it was just another demon of the Fade. "Did I really ... I mean ... was I really touched by Andraste?"

"You were touched by a memory," she tapped the side of her head. "Andraste has returned to the Maker's side, but there are spirits who remember her. How she thinks and moves, what she will say, as well as her healing powers."

Cullen did not know whether to be relieved or disappointed, but his head was clear. He did need healing after all. "I ... thank you. How did you do that?"

Her expression was conflicted. "Do you remember those templars? The three that died? You saw me then." He nodded. She went on, "it takes that. Being an abomination. Allowing a spirit to take possession of me."

_Conduits of both good and evil_, indeed, and something else. Something else that the memory of Andraste said to him. "I ... can I ... um ..." Irving gave him a knowing smile and stepped away, the sound of his footsteps travelling up the stairs absorbed by the books around them. "Can I speak to you later?"

"Yes. I'm staying here tonight." Redness crept up her neck to reach the tops of her ears. "I'll ... I'll be in my chambers."

Cullen sat at a table in the library and listened to the sound of her retreating footsteps. He has known what she was since the incident, and aside from his hysterical rantings that night, he kept her secret, though his instinct told him that it was wrong. There was a right, and a wrong. Things were simple.

Ellyn came into his world and replaced his black and white with shades of gray.


	9. Grey Warden

_(This chapter is utter unabashed cute boys fluff, in both prose and dialogue. Perfectly SFW but you may giggle out loud. The last three chapters have been very heavy -interjected with Alistair fluff, but gollygeewhiz it was bloody- so this is written in a lighter tone for a change. I'll get back to the blood and death and plot soon enough. It's a promise.)_

1

Cullen fidgeted in front of Ellyn's old room. After the incident, they had her room curtain replaced, but she never stayed in it again. Not until tonight. She was behind this curtain and he felt like a total fool of a statue standing in front of it.

Mages had to be guarded, right? He was the only templar left for guard duty, right? So, it made sense that he was standing here in front of her room, right?

Right.

What was he here for? To apologize for running away when she was attacked? To thank her for all she had done? She saved all she could, even salvaged his sanity when she could have simply left. Cullen stood in front of her door curtain, unable to turn back, and unable to think up an excuse to talk to her.

It opened with a whoosh.

"Ser Cullen, if you're going to stand guard, you can stand …" Ellyn pushed him inside her room and guided him to a spot right next to a vanity table, "right here."

"Uh..." The stuttering was back.

"My curtain doesn't reach the floor." She beamed at him, as he quickly turned crimson. "You've been standing there for a full twenty minutes. The suspense was killing me."

Cullen didn't know where to look, so he stared straight ahead. Where did he leave his helm? He wished he had his helm.

"You haven't changed at all, Cullen." She picked a random spot on the wall behind him to look at. "You stepped off Kester's boat and just stood there turning as red as your hair."

"You...remember?" Cullen's eyes went wide. As long as she wasn't looking at him, he was able to keep his gaze on her. "I thought..."

"When I saw a looking glass later, my forehead was covered in mud. I thought you must have been embarrassed for me." She stole a glance at him and he immediately looked away.

"I … I wasn't …"

She put a hand to his lips. "I guess I was just never sure. All these years. About me, about you, about anything, really. I mean, I was locked up here. I have no experience to compare anything to. And ... you know, before our conversation when you were in that blood cage, we never really talked to each other."

"It … it would be inappropriate." Cullen set his expression into that of a guard.

Ellyn almost rolled her eyes at him, but thought better of it. The more she pushed, the more he retreated into his shell. "I saw you in the Fade. Well, a demon pretending to be you."

"You … did?" It was a confession from her, of sorts. Demons would not bother tempting her with something she did not care about.

"I knew it wasn't you because you're a good templar." She shrugged. "You're honourable and responsible. You never even tried to talk to me. The Fade version of you started talking about running away with me and I just about kicked it."

Cullen chuckled at the thought of Ellyn kicking a demon, caught himself, and turned redder. "I would never …"

"I know." Ellyn focused on the center of his breastplate. "That's … that's what I love about you."

There they stood, seemingly for an eternity, her staring at the cross on his armour and him at the top of her head, caught in complete awkwardness in the throes of first love. She broke the silence by tapping on his gauntlet with one hand, "it's really stupid of me, really. I like you because you're a good templar who won't run away with me. You understand the meaning of duty." She pursed her lips, "and I think I have come to understand it too."

Cullen nodded. She was standing very close for a conversation. She was expecting him to kiss her, he surmised, but he couldn't possibly. He was a templar. He was never this close to her before. Each time he saw her in the past, she turned away. It surprised him to know that she was probably blushing as hard as he was.

"I don't even know what you like about me. I was covered in mud, and I probably came off as a selfish little brat who's nothing but trouble." She knew she was babbling, but she could not help herself. "I can talk your face off, but it changes nothing. I'm still a mage, and you're still a templar..."

"You're not selfish."

"I'm sorry?" She wasn't expecting him to talk at all.

"You came back to save the Circle when you could have left us all to die. You saved me from certain madness. I thought I escaped the demons, but I couldn't get away from one of my own making." Cullen went on, not stuttering. He practised this speech when he was deciding on what to say to her when he saw her. He forced himself to look her in the eyes. "Thank you."

It was now Ellyn who was fidgeting. "When you were in that cage, you said that you were going to forget all about me. Did you mean it?"

Cullen imagined he heard a hint of sadness in her voice. "I … I don't know. I said a lot of things."

"Can I do something incredibly selfish right now?" She sought his gaze.

Cullen felt the crease deepen in between his eyebrows. What was one to make of that question? "Um … yes?"

Ellyn raised her arms and slipped her hands behind his neck, slowly, tentatively. He saw that she was shaking, and the face in front of him, with her lips quivering ever so slightly, revealed just how terrified she was. His heart raced.

She pressed her lips to his, and his arms wrapped around her instinctively, naturally, as if that was where they belonged. He heard the clatter of his plate mail pressing on the stone wall behind him, felt the pressure as she leaned on his chest. He resisted the urge to pull off his gauntlets to run his hands along her back, years of Chantry training shouting 'no' in his ears._ Love is not a sin, Ser Cullen._

When he thought he couldn't possibly tear away from her, she pulled away. She stood still with her forehead against his breastplate, her hands on either side of her head, balled into fists. Cullen slid his arms back into guarding position at his sides; if anyone came in right now, she looked for the world as if she was crying on his chest.

"I'm sorry," Ellyn mumbled, not looking up at him, "I just couldn't stand the thought of being forgotten … by you." She backed away a little. Cullen knew that this was his chance. If he wished it, he could pull her into his arms, and she would yield to him. For once, they were alone.

There was a contradiction. If he did give in, he would not be the Cullen she loved. He stared straight in front of him, stoic as a statue. The seconds ticked by, and when he thought that she deemed enough time had passed, she met his eyes. There was a familiar sparkle in them that he recognized with a start. It was the way she had always looked at him since the very first day they met in the herb garden.

"Goodbye, Ser Cullen. May the Maker watch over you." Ellyn crossed her arms in front of her and bowed. When she opened the curtain and stepped through it, the rustling of the cloth had a finality that made his chest ache. Quiet, silken footsteps on stone faded away, and she was gone.

She need not have bothered with the kiss, he thought. It would have been impossible to forget her anyhow. Cullen leaned on the wall behind him and closed his eyes; she smelled of mint and honey, when she pulled away her eyes were heavy-lidded, her countenance burned into his mind's eye forever.

2

"You're smiling." Mythal had many expressions, even though it was hard to read her sometimes. In the beginning Anders saw Ellyn mirrored in them, but he was no longer sure. "Smirking, even. What are you thinking about?"

"Do you know Cullen well?' She looked as though she was about to descend into a fit of giggles.

"Other than the fact that he stutters a lot and Ellyn has a crush on him? No." Anders did not make a habit of making friends with templars. "He's probably even more boring than he looks. Why?"

"You know how everyone has a sanctuary in the Fade? Yours is a summer cottage with eternal twilight and open fields of grass." Her control was breaking and she slapped her thigh a couple of times to stifle the coming laughter, "what do you suppose Cullen's is?"

Anders did not need to think. "A Chantry."

She rolled over onto the grass. "Oh, I shouldn't laugh. The boy has had enough suffering already. You are a terrible influence. Nothing is sacred to you."

"That's because nothing is sacred," Anders winked at her. "Just because everybody else thinks so doesn't mean it's true."

"Life is sacred," Mythal pointed out. "You're fond of living."

"If I'm not fond of living," Anders gave her a baffled look, "it kind of makes everything else a moot point, doesn't it?"

"You don't know that."

"Death is final, at least as far as I know. I enjoy living. Can we drop this? Being mostly dead is depressing."

"What would you give to live?"

Anders passed his harrowing years ago. This was something he heard often. From demons. "I don't make deals with spirits. Mages always end up with the short end of the stick."

"I am no demon, Anders." Mythal crossed her arms and tried her best to look insulted.

"You are a spirit, and I don't even know what kind of spirit you are. 'Mythal' doesn't mean anything." He glared right back.

"It meant something to the People." She was almost sad, then. A goddess, forgotten. "I'll give you a gift. Think of it as a peace offering, no deal required. I just need you to accept it."

Let it be known that Anders had a weakness against sad looking Ellyn look-a-likes. It wasn't a deal, he told himself. He was giving nothing away, and so he nodded.

Mythal held one hand in front of her chest and a blue glow appeared, spreading from where her heart should be onto her palm. Gently, she pushed it into his hands. A tingling warmth spread through him, reaching all the way to his heart.

"What did you do?" The Fade rippled; the air around him felt empty and the sky turned white. The cottage disappeared, replaced by the broken roads of the Fade.

"I give you the knowledge of spirits. It comes with a knowledge of the Fade, and the ability to recognize demons. They can't fool you." Her form shifted and changed in front of his eyes. "Neither can I."

Mythal was taller than Ellyn; she was ethereal, a being of swirling mist. Her ears were Elven, her eyes large and green, raven hair tumbled over her back all the way down to her ankles. "Wow. You know you really didn't need to hide that." Anders whistled.

"One more gift. You're now a spirit healer." She smiled at him, pale and serene, ignoring his ogling. "If you must know, Ellyn asked me to give you aid before you leave. I will cast your healing spells for you when you call."

Anders felt his jaw drop. "According to my studies, doesn't that mean I can be possessed by spirits at the drop of a pin?"

"No. Only I, and I will only do so if your life is in danger." She raised one perfect eyebrow. "Unless, of course, you choose to make a deal with another spirit."

"One is enough, thank you." He wondered what the catch was.

"You're probably wondering what I'm taking from you. So I will tell you now." Mythal tilted her head in a familiar way that Ellyn did, "trust. That is all. I want you to trust us. It will be easier for you to do that once you can see my true form."

"Who is 'us'? You and Ellyn?" Anders shook his head to clear it. There was a sensation in his limbs as if insects were crawling in his marrow. It was getting harder to concentrate on her words.

"No." Mythal took a step closer to him. It looked like a single step to Anders, but she was behind him in an instant, her hands clasped to his shoulders, pushing him. He had a sensation of being jolted out of his skin, and then -

"Anders!" Ellyn exclaimed as she saw his eyes open. Her hands were over his heart, healing energy coursing through them. There were bags under her eyes, he noted. "Here, drink this."

He took the shallow bowl out of her hand and drank the concoction. It was minty and sweet. There was strength in his arms, which surprised him. Anders swung his legs off the bed and stood. Whatever spell Ellyn used to hold him in the Fade also replenished his strength. "What is this? It's the best potion of yours I've ever tasted!" Ellyn's potions usually tasted of roots and leaves.

"It's mint tea." A smile spread across her face, banishing the fatigue etched into it by months of travelling. "Oh, Anders!" She threw his arms around him and buried her face in his chest. Anders wrapped his arms around her and nudged her forehead with his; a habit from when they were children. It made her giggle, then almost immediately the corners of her mouth turned down and she began to cry, pressing her face into his chest with wrecking sobs.

"Tell me all about it." He patted her head and whispered assurances until she stopped shaking, the front of his robe soaked with tears. She told him of the blood mage Jowan and how he tricked her into destroying his phylactery; being recruited into the Grey Wardens by Duncan; their battle and betrayal in Ostagar; Uldred, the Circle broken, and the death of Ser Clara. At the mention of Clara, her tears began anew.

"I feel like I'm losing everyone. Mythal said you have to leave too." Ellyn was looking a bit of a mess. She tried so hard not to cry, but when she finally did, there were simply too many things to cry about.

"I can't exactly travel with you while the templars are hunting me, Ellyn." He laid down, pulling her into the bed beside him, resting her head on his shoulder. "It really sounds like you're better off without me, anyway..."

"How can you say that? You're my brother!" She thumped his chest with one fist. "I missed you so much."

From the very first day they met, he knew as long as he was the only one she opened up to, she would need him. "Because you are going to stay six years old forever if you stay with me."

"I don't want to lose you too!"

Anders sat up and pulled her into his lap, resting his chin on top of her head. "Listen. You're never, ever going to lose me. That's a promise. No matter where I am, no matter ... who you're with or who I'm with, even when you marry – and it better not be a templar - or have kids," she shook her head adamantly, "I will love you. Always."

She allowed herself to be coddled for a time. "How can you be so sure about everything?"

"I'm not sure about anything." He laughed into her hair, "but I promised to be your brother. You can lose friends, boyfriends, husbands even, but never brothers."

3

In the dead of night, Ellyn and her templar escort boarded Kester's boat. The wind had died for now, making the trip uneventful. She knew where Alistair would have set up camp, so she went another way, into the Spoiled Princess Inn. After paying for a room, she waited until the innkeep's back was turned before leaving through the back door.

"How do they wear this stuff day in and day out? Argh." Anders struggled out of the layers of plate, leaving only the robe underneath. Sweat poured down his face. He rubbed the back of his head where the helm was pushing into his ponytail and giving him a headache. "It weighs a ton! That's with a heroic aura!"

"They train in it, so they're all rippling muscles." _Like Alistair_, she wanted to say, but bit her tongue.

Anders raised an eyebrow, tipped his chin and gave her a quizzical look. "So ... Mythal and I were talking about Cullen."

Ellyn's cheeks turned red, "what about Cullen?"

"Did something happen with Cullen?" She shook her head. "Are you SURE?" Ellyn shut her eyes. "No, really. I'd be glad if something did. The tower's empty, right? Don't tell me he did nothing."

Her eyes snapped open in surprise. "I ... um ... kissed him in my chambers."

"That's it?" Anders waved his arms above his head, incredulous. "Let me get this straight. You and Cullen make googly eyes at each other for three sodding years, and then when the entire tower empties out and you can be alone for once, you got him into your room and all you did was kiss him?"

Ellyn winced and the word came out in a whimper, "... yes?"

"Maker's breath, I should have raised you better." Anders covered his mouth with one hand, unsure whether to laugh or to cry. _It's my bloody fault she's a maid; I wanted to keep her to myself so badly I kept all the boys away from her._ "I was hoping that you'd lose your maidenhood to a man you love. You do love Cullen?"

She nodded, twiddling her fingers. "He's not like you, Anders. He'd never..."

Anders was tired of this charade; if only he hadn't promised to be her brother. If only. But even if he had loved her as a man, he would have had to leave her anyway. His own feelings were ambiguous but for one thing: he was sick of being selfish and he wanted her to be happy. He wasn't even going to be around her all the time anymore, to dry her tears, to make her laugh, to drive away her nightmares. He had to let someone else love her.

She had grown so much in two months. Two months in the world, without him fussing over her, and she was ... at least twelve now. He chuckled a little at that. Two more months and she might even act her age. "Ellyn, you need to live a little. Life is short. From what you've told me, yours just got shorter. Make friends, fall in love, see the world."

Ellyn wrapped her arms around his waist, buried her head in his chest, and she was six again. He allowed it. This was goodbye, at least for a while. "I have something for you." She reached into the giant pack she carried from the chest in his little room in the cellar. "I made this when you were in solitary. It helped to pass the time, and I thought it might be useful."

Anders unwrapped the rough spun cloth. Inside was a Tevinter magister's robe with raven feather pauldrons. The robe was blue silk, smooth under his hands, ribbed gold embroidery embellishments decorated it throughout. Instead of the long sleeves of Circle robes, it had matching gloves, and in place of the simple belt he was used to, it had complex looking leather wraps and some sort of leather girdle that doubled as armour. It wasn't that he doubted her, and it wasn't that he didn't think she was capable, but.

Raven feathers. An old memory surfaced; a hayloft, little Ellyn. A rain of raven feathers. The sight of the pauldrons unsettled him like a bad omen, "You made this?"

"Owain made most of it," she admitted. Owain was the Tranquil in charge of the Circle's storeroom. "I found the pattern in one of the library's books. It's easy to recognize a circle mage, but no one bothers a Tevinter magister, right? I sewed the feathers on myself. The rest needs more concentration than I'm capable of. Do you like it?"

"It's almost as gorgeous as I am," Anders flashed her a wicked smile. She made a face as of throwing up. "Really! I will treasure it always."

"You might want to grow a beard and dye your hair black. Blonde isn't a Tevinter colour."

"Never." Anders ran a hand through his hair protectively, "Anderfels is close enough to the Tevinter Imperium that I shouldn't have that many problems. Besides, I went to enough classes to learn my Tevinter."

"Oh, there's something else." Ellyn ran off to a shed on one side of the inn, and came back with a staff. "I hid this here yesterday. It completes your disguise."

"Where did you get a Tevinter magister's staff?" Anders was amazed. Imperial goods were not easy to come by.

"Off a Tevinter magister." He stared. She shrugged, "what? We were in Denerim hunting blood mages, and one of them happened to be a magister."

"You took on a blood mage?"

"We took on a house full of blood mages, along with traps and assassins." Ellyn obviously loved this fight, by her excited tone. "I'm travelling with a templar -" Oops. Her hand went to her mouth.

The Anders cat looked as though he swallowed a whole pigeon. "A templar? Is he cute?" Ellyn paused for a second, then nodded ever so slightly. Well, he wouldn't be around to play matchmaker, so _Maker help them_. He sighed, "if you ever decide that you like him, please don't stop at kissing. You're nearly eighteen."

"We're not like that," she stared at the ground and shifted her weight from one foot to another. That meant she was unsure but she was definitely hiding something.

"Since they're always wearing head to toe armour at the Circle and all..." Anders pattered on, watching her face, "I wonder where you got the idea that templars have rippling muscles."

Ellyn blushed furiously and stood so still she might have been petrified.

"Fine, fine. I'll stop teasing you. Come here." She hugged him as if her life depended on it. He was her last connection to her old life. Ser Clara, dead. Cullen, left behind. Anders; the first voice she remembered, the boy who carried her to bed when she scraped her knees, the man who jolted her back to humanity when she lost control. He developed in her a dependency that she knew she needed to be rid of before she could grow, but it was so ingrained, so part of her, that without him she feared losing herself.

"Where will you go?" She whispered into his chest.

"Around. Eventually I'll have to go North like everyone else. With the ward you've put on that door, no one can get in there. They'll think I'm still in the cellar. So unless I get spotted – and since I'm such a handsome devil, that is highly likely – I probably have some time to roam. Maybe I'll go to Tevinter." He gave her one last squeeze before letting her out of his embrace, "freedom awaits. By the way, if you're still a maid by the next time I see you, I swear I'm dragging you to the Pearl."

Ellyn tilts her head, "what's the Pearl?"

"You've been to Denerim and haven't heard of the Pearl?" What were older brothers for, if not to torment little sisters? "You should ask your templar friend that. Maybe have him take you there. It's a ... famous landmark."

4

Alistair was surprised to see Ellyn sitting at the campfire with Leliana, giggling away. "I thought you were staying at the tower tonight."

Ellyn turned her head in his direction and he thought she might have been blushing in the light of the roaring file. "You're right. Too many dead bodies. The veil's so thin there I'd probably be attacked by shades in my sleep." Her expression turned pensive, "and I don't have a guard in the tower anymore."

Leliana gave her hand a squeeze and made a quick exit to her tent, gesturing for Alistair to sit down before she walked away. He waited until she was out of earshot. "I'm sorry. About everything."

"What for?" Some people might ask that as a rhetorical question, but not Ellyn. "You're not the one who summoned a demon and nearly killed everyone in the tower. Uldred did."

"It's something people say when other people are sad. About a loss," her lack of knowledge of the common sense hadn't ceased to surprise him yet, but he was glad to teach her something.

"Ah. Well, thank you." They were silent for a time. Alistair was close enough to see the redness around her eyes and on the tip of her nose.

"I was hoping we could talk," it was time to clear the air. She looked perplexed. "First of all, I'm not really a templar. I was trained as a templar but I was never in the Order. I wasn't sent to kill you if you turn into an abomination or anything like that -"

"Would you though?"

Alistair nearly fell over. "What?"

"Ser Clara told me that's what a templar's job is. To protect a mage 'from within and without,'" she said, playing with a leaf absentmindedly as if she was talking about shoes and not for Alistair to strike her down if she lost control. "She said that some things are worse than death."

"If that's what you want," Alistair felt his breath catch at the thought of ever hurting her in any way. "I ... uh ... listen." Though this might not be the best time, he could never forgive himself if she died today and he never said anything. "I've come to ... care for you. I know we haven't known each other for a very long time, but I just want you to know that, well, you can talk to me."

Ellyn stared. There was a measure of gratitude and understanding. Alistair did not believe that she actually read it as a confession, but more of brotherly concern. Her smile was bright when it broke across her face, the way she lit up at the prospect of cookies at the next town, or a hot bath when they reach Redcliffe. "Thank you, Alistair. I feel like a fool that I've been afraid of you all this time."

"That's because I'm fearsome. Knight in shining armour and all that." He said with mock bravado.

"I was attacked. By three templars. At the tower." Ellyn said with some reservation, "They died, and it gave me good reason to think that the Chantry may want to have me watched closely. So when you started using templar abilities, I made certain assumptions. I'm sorry I never asked. I should have, but ..." she shrugged.

"Wait, you took on three templars by yourself and killed them?" Alistair's eyesbrows went up.

"My brother showed up to save me, and he almost died." She said, her eyes evasive. "It doesn't really matter anymore. He said: make friends, fall in love, see the world. Friends?" She held out a hand.

Alistair shook it. It wasn't quite what he had in mind, but it was a good start. "You have a brother?"

"His name is Anders. We sort of ... adopted each other. He's gone too."

They stared into the fire for a time. Finally, she said, "well, I think I feel like a Grey Warden now."

"You've been a warden for two months. Everyone calls you 'Warden' like it's your name."

"Duncan said the Grey Wardens gave up everything to fight the blight – titles, family, all that." She explained. "I always carried my past around with me. I'm a Circle mage, I have a brother, and I've always treated Ser Clara like she was my mother, in spite of all the things she said. I guess I held out hope that one day, I can go home again." Ellyn tipped her head forward and wrapped her arms around her knees to hide her tears if she should cry. "I said all my goodbyes tonight."

Alistair moved closer. He silently wrapped one arm around her shoulders, tipping her against his side, and he held her until she stopped shaking. For all their misunderstandings, they were now united. The last two Grey Wardens in all of Ferelden.

Two months ago, she thought life was predictable, boring, and safe. She had a place in the world, and though her status was a curse, she knew where she belonged. Now the only thing certain about Ellyn's life was change.


	10. Royal Blood

1

They set off in the gray light of dawn. Ten templars; the six Ellyn brought with her from Redcliffe as well as four more to escort the mages back to the tower when their business was done. She walked with the First Enchanter and Wynne, glad for a bit of familiarity of the home she left behind, Alistair and Leliana scouting ahead of them for any trouble. Sten and Fleur brought up the rear, while Morrigan disappeared with a promise to meet them at their destination.

Alistair was suspicious, but Ellyn understood completely. For an apostate, travelling with a group of templars could not be comfortable, in spite of all the things she said when she was well out of their hearing range.

"So, how did things go last night?" Leliana probed.

"I don't think it's much of a secret," Alistair looked behind them, making sure Ellyn was out of earshot. "You were probably peeking out of your tent flaps the whole time. I'm onto you."

"Ah, the knight in shining armour comforting the damsel in distress. I can spin such tales," she winked at him. "I need details. Unless you want me to make them up, of course."

"If you heard that much, you don't need anything from me." He knew she was listening. "Did you know that she has a brother?"

"You must mean Anders. Of course I have. Her life revolves around him."

"Any details?"

"According to Ellyn, he is perfection itself – handsome, kind, gentle, adventurous," Leliana surmised, "though I believe that's just brother worship. From the stories she told of him, I would say the man is vain, selfish, and obviously overprotective."

"Great. More ideals to live up to. What do you mean by 'obviously overprotective'?"

"Look at her." She shot him a sidelong glance. "Stop beating around the bush. You must really want to ask about what happened with Cullen last night."

"I do not." Alistair kept his eyes on the road.

"You're not a very good liar, Alistair."

"Stop with the baiting, and tell me."

"She didn't tell me. Sorry, no details." Leliana let out a soft giggle. "I just wanted to see that kicked puppy expression on your face. It's so cute."

"You're evil."

"Oh, Alistair." Leliana said when she was done laughing, "you can tell by looking at her that nothing happened. The girl is an open book."

The road between Lake Calenhad and Recliffe was clear, and they approached Redcliffe village by evening without incident. Of course, no bandit group would be foolhardy enough to attack as large a group as theirs of magi. Including Wynne, they were seven – power enough to foil an army.

As her templar guards returned to the Chantry in the village, Ellyn stopped by briefly to tell of their valiant efforts in the tower, and the Knight Commander seemed pleased that it did not turn out to be a suicide mission after all.

Irving and the mages prepared the ritual to send a mage into the Fade. He knew that Ellyn could travel into the Fade at will, so this was all for show. If the Chantry found out about her powers, there was no telling what they would do to her. She was harrowed, so she could not be made Tranquil. _I'd probably end up in Aeonar._ _The Chantry's solution for dangerous mages._

_Do you want me to handle this, Ellyn?_

_No. I need more practice with the Fade. I will call you if I need offensive spells._ After having spent practically an entire day in the Fade, she realized that relying on someone else for everything – as she had always done – wasn't the best idea.

The demon offered her Cullen, and more than a vision or an experience. He would escape the Order, destroy her phylactery, and run away with her. It was very tempting, Ellyn thought, until she called on Mythal and blasted her out of existence.

Ellyn was quite tired of demons using the people she treasured against her.

She woke to see Alistair's face over her, standing vigil with his sword. This was familiar, and to her surprise, not unwelcoming. Cullen held the same post during her harrowing; the templar to slay her if she became possessed. "It is done." She allowed herself to be helped from the floor, "let us go see Arl Eamon."

When she finally saw Arl Eamon, she almost laughed. The poisoning was not severe; all they really needed was a spirit healer. She could have done this on her own, but it did give her the excuse to travel to the Urn of Sacred Ashes.

Arl Eamon would call the Landsmeet when they finish gathering the armies with their Grey Warden treaties, and Ellyn was not surprised to find out that Alistair was the heir to the Ferelden throne. Coincidences did not exist for her. Mythal always made sure everything happened for a reason, including being partnered up with a templar with royal blood.

Everything was part of Mythal's plan. She was sure of it. All the little coincidences tangled up together in a deal that kept her alive since they bonded.

2

"You're probably wondering why I didn't tell you about the whole ... bastard prince thing." Alistair stumbled over his words, clearly nervous. She was more curious about why he waited until they were at camp to approach her.

"No, I'm not."

"Um, really?" He looked both relieved, surprised, and a little hurt that she did seem to care.

"I didn't tell you anything about myself until yesterday. So why would I be mad at you?" She looked up from chopping up herbs for their stew. "We all have our secrets, Alistair."

"Good point," Alistair had an uneasy feeling that Ellyn was doing the cooking again. She approached it with enthusiasm, but that was about the only skill she brought to the cauldron. "So ... what's for dinner?"

She flashed him the biggest smile. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

"Ha ha, very funny. I think my sense of humour is rubbing off on you."

"I learned it all from my brother. He's a terrible influence." She knelt to pick up a bundle of herbs from a pack on the floor, and a crossbow bolt travelled through where her head had been to lodge itself in Alistair's arm. "Get down!"

She pulled him down and had a barrier over them both in an instant. Ellyn took stock of the situation: the bolt was in his sword arm, and the wound was turning black. Poison. _Maker damn it all to the void._ They were alone, but everyone should be coming back soon from their tasks. She just needed to hold them off for a while. "Stay there and play dead, Alistair."

It was said that the elves of Arlathan was the first to practice blood magic, and the Tevinter magisters learned it from them. The Elven Pantheon, the first of the gods, were the masters of using life force to power their spells. Mythal was the second of the Pantheon.

Ellyn reached down and drew it from a small patch of blood from the ground. It wasn't just human blood – it was royal blood. Enough for a net; enough for her to scent out those who shot him. There was one east of them, the closest. Right there.

She focused her power out to a single point in his brain and tore his senses from him. She saw through his eyes, ate his memories. Twenty of them ringed the camp with crossbows and daggers, poison-tipped. They were here for the Wardens. Near her feet, Alistair sputtered. She prayed that his eyes were closed.

One by one she drew them in, using one to lure another. When they were close enough, she squeezed. A warrior could use a sword and riddle a man full of wounds so he would bleed to death; a rogue could sneak up behind one and twist his neck. A blood mage could use so much power as to dry her own veins before a foe was slain, or she could squeeze in all the right places.

All the more important when all she had was one drop of blood. One by one, they fell, an artery severed here, a heart blocked there, and each one gave her more, more delicious power. The blood of those she fell fed her, each death more explosive than the last when frugality was no longer needed.

She felt a moment of horrid fascination as she made one slice open his own artery, and another to slit his own throat. Then the guilt came, as it always did, for the blood lust was Mythal's. Mythal could drink blood and enjoy it as rich wine, while Ellyn found that the coppery smell made her nauseous.

There was only one left. She took her last puppet and held him there, terrified. He looked out of his own eyes but could not control his limbs. The ringleader; his mind was full, and it would be easier for him to explain the plan to her companions than for her to let them know how she read his mind.

She would deal with him after she drew the poison from Alistair's veins. There was power enough in her, nineteen lives in all. Ellyn reached down, pulled out the bolt, and heard him whimper. She the poison flowed upwards into the air, out of the wound, and it was strange to see his blood the way she could see now – it was poison, even without the dart. She separated them, the deathroot and the taint, the one which killed quickly and another that killed slow as water wore channels in stone.

The Chantry taught that blood magic was forbidden because it corrupted mages. It was not entirely true. It was just very, very hard to stop, to be one filled with life force when there was nothing else left to kill. She was full to brimming, covered in a red glow; Alistair stared at her with wide eyes and he knew what he saw.

Maleficar.

Ellyn picked up the knife she was using to chop herbs. She handed it to Alistair, hilt first, gestured at a spot in between her shoulder and her collarbone. He understood, though when the knife was about to sink into her, he hesitated and closed his eyes.

She stumbled a few steps back, pulling the knife out in the process. The pain jolted her and ended her spell, dissipating the excess energy. Ellyn dropped to the ground, exhausted, with a surprised Alistair standing over her. She drew the life force out of the corpses around her by instinct, the wound in her shoulder, a shocking burn, disappeared almost straightaway.

For the next few minutes they both lost the power of speech.

The leader of the assassins, last of her puppets, fell to his knees not ten feet away, the strings holding him severed. Silently, Alistair dragged him into the camp, and silently Ellyn gave Alistair a rope to tie him up. They would have to wait for their companions to return and for this assassin to wake. Alistair turned to Ellyn, accusation apparent in his eyes.

"We all have our secrets?" His voice was full of anger barely contained. "I thought you were a healer!"

"I am a healer." There were no other options were available. No mage was able to sustain a barrier for long, certainly not long enough to wait for rescue. If she had waited, the poison would have done him in before anyone else arrived.

"What do you call this then, huh?" Alistair gestured to the bloody scene around them. Nineteen dried skeletal bodies ringed them, lying in their own pools of blood. "Blood magic is forbidden!"

"That is not what I heard from Duncan. Isn't the joining itself blood magic?"

They squared off facing one another, neither one willing to back down. Alistair backed by divine right, Ellyn by her stubbornness. "We were just at the tower killing blood mages and abominations! Don't you know how dangerous it is to deal with demons?"

"My guardian spirit is not a demon!" She feared Mythal just as much she loved her. Mythal killed, left Ellyn with her sorrow. Mythal made decisions, Ellyn lived with them. Mythal was all she had left. "You were going to die!"

"You could have paralysed them the way you always do when we're surrounded!"

She bit the side of her mouth in indignation. He was right. That might have given her enough time to get the poison out of him, and she wouldn't have had to use blood magic. "I panicked, okay? They had poison!"

Alistair half spun on the ground away from Ellyn, too angry to look at her anymore. "Blood magic. How could you?"

Ellyn felt a tantrum coming on and she gave herself up to it, "The least you can do is say 'thank you'! I hate you!" She stamped her foot, "you self-righteous sodding pompous templar! My brother is right about the lot of you!" She turned away as well, determined to let him stew on it.

Fleur was the first to return, then Sten, who surveyed the dead bodies and looked not at Alistair, but at Ellyn. He was not surprised. When Wynne and Morrigan did the same, Alistair wondered if he was the only one who took Ellyn for what she was.

"I'm guessing dinner is a loss." Leliana arrived, picked up the discarded knife and gave Alistair a curious look. "I don't see any other weapons around. Did you kill all these people with this here little knife? That would make quite a story."

3

The assassin Ellyn spared turned out to be an Antivan Crow hired by Loghain. To Alistair's continued irritation, he also turned out to be Ellyn's new best friend. He followed her so closely he might step on her robe, flattered her, and entertained her with his stories of Antiva on their week long trek first to Denerim and into the Brecillian forest.

Wynne approached him with her usual understanding smile. "Alistair, do you need to talk?"

He needed more than talk. There were two very sharp daggers on Zevran's back. If he chose to, the man could kill Ellyn whenever he wanted to and vanish into the woods before anyone could catch up with him. "Don't you wonder about what happened to all the other assassins?"

"Ellyn got to them, didn't she?" Wynne answered, calm as still water.

Up ahead, Ellyn laughed and playfully swatted Zevran on the arm. "It doesn't strike you as odd that a healer killed nineteen assassins while I was unarmed?"

"If you keep making that face, it's going to stay that way. And no, I don't find it odd. I'm guessing you know what she is."

"A maleficar." Alistair lowered his voice and spat out the syllables one by one.

"By the Chantry's very narrow standards, yes. Ellyn did not make a deal with a demon. Otherwise...I would not be here. By the chantry's standards, Morrigan, Ellyn, and I are all apostates who uses 'unsanctioned' magic." Wynne once felt the same; no longer. She was not ignorant of how an abomination could also be human.

"Well, I don't even know who she is anymore." He paused, hoping the gravity of his words would change how he truly felt, "she was our healer and I was her shield. Then she went ahead and -"

"Saved your life?" Wynne cut him off. "Did the one thing she hated so that you may live? Alistair, think about it. Is this about her magic, or about your role?"

He did not know what to say to that. Ellyn was all the things a man wanted; something straight out of a fairy tale. Princess in a tower, damsel in distress, waiting for true love's first kiss. He was happy to be her shield. It gave him ... purpose.

Then one day, she showed him how she needed him not at all. He sighed, "don't mind me, I'm just feeling useless."

"She needs you, Alistair. You understand that a templar protects a mage 'from within and without'?"

"Well, so much for that. She's already an abomination and I'm letting her live. She's handling the 'without' bit just fine."

"It was her last resort. The fault lies partially with the Circle of Magi. Ellyn is a powerful conduit – more so than any we have seen." Wynne shook her head, realizing how foolish they all had been. "Irving trained her to be an aura caster to influence hundreds of men on the battlefield at once. He also wanted to keep her defenceless so she would feel the need for templars. Maybe it's time for me to teach her some other ways to defend herself."

"I heard a lot of things from the templars at the Circle when I was waiting for her to arrive. It sounds as though she was very sheltered."

"'Sheltered' is the polite way to put it. Isolated is closer to the truth." Wynne let out a long sigh, "The Circle was afraid of her, and the Knight Commander wanted to keep her away from everyone if possible. She was only allowed the contact of three people – Anders, Ser Clara, and Irving. None of them are here to protect her now. She needs ... someone who cares about her."

"I already care about her." Alistair admitted.

The mage did not seem surprised. "That is easy to do, Alistair. She is a beautiful girl, and she has a good heart. But she is young, and kept that way. Do not coddle her. Anders did that for years, and she's no better for it."

4

Alistair was sure that Ellyn was avoiding him. During the day she kept herself to the front of their column while assigning Alistair to the rear, at night she stuck to Leliana like glue, the girls going off to bathe in the river when they were close enough to one.

This time he left nothing up to chance. She went into her tent to get her staff, and when she came out, there he was. "Ellyn, we need to talk."

"What about? I have a lesson with Wynne." She held her staff in front of her as if it could ward him off.

"Come with me." Camp was no place to talk. Leliana was sure to be listening somewhere, and the Antivan elf no doubt watching from the shadows. They walked in silence, her arm in his obligingly as he helped her step over roots in the dark. He measured out the distance in minutes.

"Look. I'm not saying that I approve of your use of forbidden magic," he took her hand in his once they were in a clearing where the sounds of the camp was no longer apparent. "But you did it to save my life, and I never thanked you. So ... thank you."

Her eyes widened in surprise. She was half expecting a lecture. "Um ... you don't need to thank me. You've saved my life plenty of times. I was just being a little brat." Ellyn attempted a half-smile, pursing her lips. "I shouldn't have yelled."

"What I mean is ... I was harsh with you, and I must have come off as," he took a deep breath, "ungrateful. You obviously don't want to resort to ... forbidden magic, either."

She cast her eyes down and chewed her lip. "I didn't really want to kill those people. You were poisoned and my first thought was 'they're going to pay' and I just ... lost control."

"If you didn't killed them, they would have killed us both. Your new elven friend told us so." Alistair tried his best to keep jealousy out of his tone. "Please be careful. I don't think," he paused, letting out a small sigh, "I don't think I'm strong enough to kill you." That came out completely wrong, and _Maker_ she looked as though she was bout to cry, "No, I mean I don't want to kill you."

"Maybe you should," her voice was quiet, he thought in the moonlight she looked so young and lost. "I'm a danger to everyone."

"No, you're a danger to darkspawn and bandits!" Alistair leaned closer so she could see his face in the dark, "I'm a danger to them too, what with the sword and the shield and the holy smite."

"But I ..." Ellyn had been hiding this for so long it became second nature, but it was time to tell him. "Remember I told you that I was attacked at the circle by templars?"

"Yes?" It was only three days ago that she told him by the campfire. "What of it?"

"I killed them. When Anders came to save me, he wasn't ... coming to save me. He came to help me regain control," Ellyn buried her face in her hands, "I almost killed him too."

Alistair was surprised not by her admission but by how much death affected her. Their two months together were filled with death, her auras boosting his power behind his sword, while he mete out death without a nary thought. They were killers of more than mindless darkspawn; bandits, looters, thieves, if any dared bare steel against them, they struck back.

She was trained to be a healer of armies, the mage that kept men alive. Now she was out in the world, killing them, and each death added more weight to her shoulders.

What was it that Wynne said? She needed someone who cared for her. Someone she would want to protect. "You said you 'almost' killed him. I'm guessing you didn't want to, and you stopped yourself."

"He was in a coma for two months! Two whole months!" She sobbed softly, bunching up the sleeves of her robe to wipe her eyes. "He didn't even say anything about it once I finally cured him. He just ... acted like it didn't matter that I was the one ... who ..."

"Ellyn, he knows you didn't want to hurt him. That's probably why he didn't say anything. But he's not here anymore, so if something happens again you'll have to learn to control yourself." He held her shoulders, keeping her at arm's length. Wynne did tell him not to coddle her, but _Maker_ was it difficult with her sobbing in front of him. "But I will try my best to make sure you won't have to do that again. I – we – will not leave you undefended."

Alistair waited for her crying to stop. It was only a scant few minutes, and he quickly realized that Ellyn was very much like a child. Coddle her, and she would keep crying – hours if you let her, but if you waited, she handled herself just fine. Ellyn wiped away her last tears with one sleeve. "Thank you, Alistair."

"Do you still hate me?" He gave her an open smile that he hoped was charming. 

She stuck out her tongue a little. "I didn't mean that. Well, I meant it at the time. Not anymore."

"Oh, good. No more secrets, okay?" Alistair offered his arm, she took it guiltily and said nothing. There were some things she could not promise, and secrets were part of her life.


	11. The Prisons We Wrought

1

Some said that the Brecillian forests were haunted. Werewolves and spirits lived there, cabals of maleficarum, possessed sylvanwood, and of course, the Dalish elves, which was the most feared of all.

They came seeking the Dalish, and as soon as the group entered the forest, Ellyn had began to reconsider their decision. She changed course outside of Redcliffe after she recruited Zevran, hoping that one visibly Dalish Elf in their company might prevent them being shot full of arrows the moment they were spotted.

She had seen no sign of them, however. There were snarling sounds on the edges of their camp at night, and a mist that hung over their camp that covered everything in a thin film of moisture. Wending paths that ran into and over each other made navigation nigh impossible. Twice they were attacked by mad sylvanwood, rage demons in the Fade that crossed the veil only to possess trees, and thrice by blight wolves, though they should have been far North enough that the blight hadn't affected this land as of yet.

Ellyn wished they could have stayed in Denerim longer. She missed civilization, stone walls, baths, and the smell of flowers in the market.

As they walked the forest paths, she looked often at Wynne. She seemed as exhausted as Ellyn was. The roads resembled the raw Fade, and she grew more distrustful of what she saw by the day. If the trees could be possessed, she wondered if the spirits could possess here, not just mages.

It was a week into their waiting when she saw the white wolf. It stalked the edges of their camp in the night, moonlight gliding off its fur made it seem ethereal, its profile in shadow blended into the darkness. It sat patiently, beckoned to her, half-hidden in the trees.

Like a heroine in a fairytale, she followed the white wolf. Alone. Before long, she was completely lost but for the white streak that crisscrossed the gaps in the trees, until she came to a clearing with an enormous tree. Ellyn reached out a hand to touch it; its roots were gnarled and the size of other tree trunks, fossilized, the trunk immeasurable. As soon as she tried to map out the edges of it, it expanded. Her vision became dizzy and she had to refocus herself.

The white wolf sat over a gap in the roots, howled, and jumped in. Ellyn followed.

It was a long fall to the bottom. She landed tip-toe, on water. _On water?_ There was a cavern under the roots. She searched the ceiling and saw a pinpoint of bright light enough to illuminate the underground lake. The white wolf sat on one of two islands, swishing its tail. Waiting.

Ellyn moved forward on the water, leaving ripples in her wake. It should have been odd, to walk on water, but right now it was the most natural thing in the world. The white wolf moved a few steps back at her approach, making room for her. Where it walked, flowers bloomed. A soft fragrance filled the air. She plucked a single white blossom with strange bow-like petals and tucked it into her robe. When she turned to face the wolf, it was ...

Not a wolf. A tree. No, a woman. Ellyn blinked rapidly, hoping to shake away the confusion. What was she looking at? A woman who was a tree and also a wolf. "Did I follow you here?"

The tree-woman-wolf stared at her with blank eyes and spoke in a voice not unlike Mythal's. "Welcome. I am the Lady of the Forest. This is my ... prison."

"Are we in the Fade?" Ellyn sat down on the grass next to the Lady. There were clovers here, soft pink velvety blossoms that tickled her palm as she brushed at them. If this was the Fade, it felt entirely too real.

"We are ... in the Beyond. It is what the elves call the Fade. It is one and the same ... but we have had centuries to build this part of it." The Lady pointed at the island across from them. "Look."

The opposite island was consumed by a large, gnarly oak with a vaguely human shape. Its roots were large and round, extending deep into the green murky water. There were red gashes in it, seeping a darkness not unlike blighted blood. A face was suggested in the way the bark overlaid upon itself, caught in a silent scream.

"What is that?" Ellyn's eyebrows knotted together in wonderment.

"The man who bound me here. I was hoping ... that you can help us."

"That," Ellyn paused for effect, and gave the Lady a look. "That is a tree."

"I am a wolf, who was not always a wolf. You are a goddess, a child, and a woman. We do not always look as our true nature dictates."

She examined the tree further. There was a shape in the trunk that looked like a man, but it was so closed away and warped it was hard to pick out the body from the wood. Like an abomination, she thought with a start, when everything that was mortal or human had been stripped away.

"He is beyond my help, Lady. Maybe in the beginning when it was only a sapling, but now ..." Ellyn trailed off, not wanting to continue with _all we can do is put him out of his misery_.

The Lady crossed her arms and bowed her head in sadness. Ellyn saw that her arms and legs were roots, extending into the water just as the old gnarled oak's did. They were both ill. She was tired of this prison and wished for death; his hatred was so deep-rooted he did not know any other way to live. So they sat here in the Fade, year in and year out for centuries, trapped.

"Find me." Ellyn said to the oak, hovering her hands slightly over the bark. "I will help you, if I can." Something glittered and she spied eyes like her own, a light hazel, showing just a hint of understanding.

Ellyn woke to the smell of that flower she picked in her dream. Searching her robe, she found nothing, and felt a little disappointment. It was a silly thought, of course. The Fade was a different realm, the only entity that was able to pass between that realm and this were spirits, and they only did so with mages as conduits.

"That smells pretty...and familiar." Leliana leaned in and sniffed her over breakfast. "My mother used to smell exactly like that."

"I dreamt of flowers last night, and now I smell like one." Ellyn pulled at the front of her mage robe, one small line of hooks undone. Zevran stared with one eyebrow up and obvious amusement, ignoring the scowls from Alistair who looked as though he was just daring the elf to do anything. "I tucked it into my robe, right here, and I know it's kind of dumb but I was half expecting it to still be here by the time I wake up."

"It's a flower called Andraste's Grace. It's white -"

"The petals look like bows and there's a bit of orange in the middle?"

"That's it. You saw it in your dream?" Leliana looked slightly take aback.

"Mage don't ... dream. We walk the Fade in our sleep." Ellyn explained when she saw that horrified look, "everyone walks the Fade in their sleep. Mages are just aware of it, that's all." She worried at a nail. "I have an idea. Fleur!"

The Mabari ran to her in a flurry of slobber and claws, then promptly sat right in front of her, to attention. It is said that Mabari resembled their owners after a while, and Fleur was nothing but proper. Ellyn stuck out her wrist and the dog looked at her and whined. "Smell this. I need to try to find out where it came from."

Fleur bounced in a circle around her, ran off to one edge of their camp, and barked. _This way_.

"Thanks, kitty," she slapped her thighs twice, and the dog returned, at her feet again. "We'll follow you out that way after we pick up the tents, okay?"

"You call your dog 'kitty'?" Zevran asked, nonplussed.

"I'm a cat person." Ellyn replied as if that explained everything.

Zevran slipped an arm around her waist and gave her a leery smile. "One would think that was a crime in Ferelden the way men here get so attached to their dogs, my dear Warden." Just as smoothly, he slipped away and went off to pack his tent.

Leliana walked by Alistair as he was strapping on his armour. She casually crouched down to fix one leather strap on his back that he had flipped twice. "If you don't do something, that Antivan is going to steal her from right under your nose."

"That man tried to kill her last week!" Alistair seethed. "How can she just ... trust him like that?"

"Probably the same way she trusts Sten and Morrigan," she shrugged and pointed at herself. "Or me."

"Well, she should grow a brain."

"Zevran is being charming, and you're being surly. I know who I'd choose." She winked. "That's all I'm saying." She left him to his packing.

Trekking into the forest with a dog leading them was dangerous business. Fleur did not believe in paths. If a path was made shorter by jumping down a four-foot cliff, she jumped.

The Dalish found them in a small clearing covered in wildflowers.

"Stop right there, Shemlen. You're surrounded." A voice called out from the woods beyond. When Alistair reached behind him for his sword, it bellowed. "We have a bow trained on every one of you. Don't even think about it."

Ellyn stepped forward out of their usual protective formation slowly with her hands up, staff firmly on her back, and glanced into the trees where the voice was coming from. Alistair thought they might just shoot her out of principle alone. They did say 'don't move.'

Instead, an elf dropped out of one of the trees, bow still raised, but with a strange look in her eyes as if she couldn't believe what she was looking at. "You are ..."

"Aneth ara. Your Keeper is looking for me." Ellyn was counting on the fact that the 'man' she spoke to in the Fade was their keeper. Hopefully he needed her help as much as she needed his. "I am a Grey Warden."

"You are the one our Keeper spoke of. Your companions are too well armed to come with us, however. We cannot risk so many shemlen in our camp. If you must meet our Keeper you will do so alone."

"You will not harm my companions?"

"The hunters will leave with you. We will take you to the Keeper."

"Ma nuvenin." Ellyn turned to her companions, "I will be back. If I don't..."

"You're just going to go with them? Alone?" Alistair was about to step forward and stop her when she put a hand up in front of him to stop him. "Can't I at at least come with you? You need a templar guard."

"The Dalish Keepers are mages, and they don't like templars. If it's dangerous, it is better to keep us separated, and if it's not, you have nothing to worry about."

With that, she disappeared into the woods. They had no choice but to sit and wait. Those who had knowledge of herbalism searched the clearing for useful plants, Leliana gathered fragrant flowers for a sachet, Sten and Fleur circled the perimeter to prevent more hunters from taking them unawares.

Alistair had nothing to do. He sat, polished his armour, and worried.

"She's ... quite a courageous woman. Surprising, even after she slaughtered all my associates, I did not expect her to just go to the Dalish on her own." Zevran prattled to an annoyed Alistair while he prepared some deathroot he found at the edge of the clearing. "There are some bloodcurdling tales about what the Dalish do to humans, you know."

"What sort of tales?" Alistair did not truly wish to know, but he was bored. "Are you just going to make me more worried?"

"Considering how many people she managed to kill in under five minutes, I'd be more inclined to worry about more Dalish in the trees shooting arrows at us." He smiled at Alistair. "Not that I wouldn't know they were there, of course."

"There were some books written by Brother Genitivi – we met him in Haven when we were after the ashes of Andraste – and he had some writings on the Dalish." Leliana wagged a finger for effect, "something about them trapping travellers and cannibalism and such. Nonsense, hopefully, They don't seem barbaric. Most of the tales are probably spread so that the humans will just stay away."

"You two are NOT helping." Alistair rubbed his temples. _Never should have let that girl out of my sight._

"'Tis true that there are some tales of the Dalish that could chill you to the bone," Morrigan decided to chip in – torturing Alistair was a favourite hobby of hers, apparently. "Though I believe you two have them mixed up with Chasind tales. It's the Chasind who cannibalize travellers and drink out of their skulls. The Dalish are more likely to hang one upside down. In little pieces."

"That's it. We're going after her. It's been three hours already." Alistair picked up his pack. "We can't just wait here while she ... does whatever it is she does."

"And how do you propose we do that?" Zevran asked. "It is not likely for the Dalish to leave a trail."

Leliana looked up from her bundle of flowers and gave him a mysterious smile. "Oh, I'm sure they don't, but somebody did."

2

Zathrian was more human than she expected. She thought he was tall, from a distance, and up close she realized that it was his bearing. He carried himself with a kind of easy arrogance, a self-righteousness that was not unlike a templar's.

The Dalish clan eyed her suspiciously as she passed them with the hunters from the forest. There was a certain respect, not for humans, but for the staff she carried on her back. Mages were just as ostracized as elves were, for the most part. Elves had more freedom, if the truth was told. Templars did not go around hunting rogue elves.

"You are the one I saw." Zathrian nodded to the hunters, and they dispersed to their posts. "What is your business with me?"

Ellyn allowed Mythal to manifest for a split second, bringing a piece of the Fade with her, and just as quickly pushed her away. Zathrian's arrogant smirk dropped away in a flash. "You are..."

"I am as you are. Bound to a spirit."

"Bound to one of the Creators," he shook his head, baffled.

"Only an aspect of her." Ellyn kept her gaze steady and recited the words she was taught. "My name is Ellyn, I am a Grey Warden and I seek the aid of the Dalish against the Blight."

"A Grey Warden. We have been moving North to escape the effects of the Blight, but I'm sure you saw some of it yourself. There are blight wolves in the forest. I'm afraid, however, that we are in no position to help you. Our hunters are ... ill."

"I am a healer. May I take a look?"

"Come this way."

Cots were placed haphazardly in the temporary sick area. There were so many of them Ellyn didn't know where to start. Most of them were in various states of raving madness, heads lolled, arms and legs twitching, mouths opening and closing mumbled incoherently. She chose a man that was unconscious who seemed the least likely to attack.

Ellyn placed her hands over the man's chest and probed with mana. Nothing physically wrong here, no broken bones, no muscle breakage that hadn't already been healed. She tried detecting a disease. Nothing. Not poison either. She moved one hand upward to his head.

Tree-woman-wolf with the blank dark eyes and pale skin, spirit and beast, raged against the frail bars of humanity. She was there, snarling, biting, her eyes a blank stare, always, devouring this man's mind from the inside out. Ellyn staggered back, turned to Zathrian, then looked back at her patient.

"That is not an illness. That is ... possession." Zathrian's eyes were tightly in control, there was no madness. Only hate. Vengeance.

When she saw Cullen's eyes after the attack in the tower, she saw rage there she could cure. This was calculated, cold, eternal vengeance. A man who would sacrifice anything to get at the thing that ate his heart.

She had to try. Cullen needed to be convinced by Irving, Greagoir, and then held down by four templars before she was able to get inside his mind. This man had a whole tribe of elves to defend him, and if she wanted to try to cure him he would have to come willingly. "There is a curse on you. I wish to help you lift it."

"You would call it a curse? I have lived for hundreds of years, Mythal. I have reclaimed what other clans never could. Immortality." His eyes turned cold, and she knew coming here was a mistake.

Pride was always good at assuming whatever shape it wished.

Ellyn moved to pull the staff from her sling; an arrow whizzed by her arm and missed her by less than an inch. Zathrian's hand gripped her other wrist. She looked down at it. There was blood on his hand. She felt her entire body go still.

3

"Do Dalish tribes make a habit of living in ruins in the middle of haunted forests behind magical barriers?"

Zevran gave Alistair a look. That look. Alistair shuddered. "I did mention that my mother was Dalish but I was born in Antiva, did I not? In case you're going to ask again, let me also mention that she died in childbirth, so she didn't tell me anything about the Dalish either."

It took them four days to get this far. There was a rhyming tree who wanted an acorn, a mad hermit who wanted strange random things, and finally a magical tree branch given by the rhyming tree that opened the way to the forest. Alistair understood now why he made the mage lead all along; their adventure was just much too strange for a warrior to handle.

He was sure Ellyn could have done the same thing in one day or less. Ellyn. Damn it all, where was she? Fleur led them to the barrier, and they had to wander around until they found a way to get around it. Now that they came through, Fleur met a white wolf who took over her job of leading the group.

Morrigan chuckled behind him. "So, when we don't have our fearless leader, we get to be led around by canines? Alistair, your ineptitude never cease to amaze me."

"Shut up, Morrigan." She was absolutely correct. There was nothing he could say – he surprised himself with his lack of leadership. Ellyn consulted him sometimes, but most of the time she barged ahead with her decisions, and though their situation seemed completely impossible, she always managed to pull it off.

Alistair had no such magic. They ran into a cabal of maleficarum and had to kill them all, lost the way when they went back to the oak with the acorn, and when they finally had the tree branch that allowed them through the barrier, Alistair gave up on trying to find his way through the woods and just told Fleur to lead. At least the dog wasn't as likely to get lost.

Now a white wolf led them to these Tevinter ruins and promptly disappeared. He was left to lead again. So instead of charging ahead like the fearless leader he was not, he asked Leliana and Zevran to scout out the place. Delegation. Maybe he was getting the hang of leading after all.

While the rogues disarmed traps and scouted out the floor for an ambush, Alistair dug into his pack, checking his food supplies. Only enough cheese for one more day. No Ellyn. An entire week away from civilization – if they ever found their way out of here again. Things could not possibly have gotten any worse.

"Arm yourselves! There's a dragon ahead and it spotted me!" Came the voice of Zevran. Things just got worse. Alistair sighed and picked up his shield. "What's the plan, boss?"

"I go in there, get its attention and try not to get killed," Alistair said grimly, "and the rest of you fall on it with everything you've got."

"What kind of a plan is that? No traps? No positions?"

"If we don't get Ellyn back, get used to it!" Alistair ran at the gate that led to the dragon. It was a dragon, all right, but at least it wasn't a high dragon. Alistair raised his shield as the first blast of fire hit him straight on, and he silently thanked Ellyn for the forethought of buying a fire-resistant shield just before they left Denerim. He quickly circled to its back and slashed at its tail until it turned around. "Now!"

The air became electrified around Alistair as Morrigan unleashed the elements. Zevran jumped onto the dragon's back, daggers snaking between the scales, Leliana ran along one wall, hopping over debris and loosing arrows along the way.

By the time Sten and Fleur joined the frey, Zevran was sheathing his daggers, having sunk them into one dragon eye each. Alistair was only slightly bloodied by the claws along his greaves. "Nice."

"I have my uses, and if you would only allow me, I could show you my ... other uses."

"We are NOT having this conversation." Alistair crouched over the dragon's horde, picked out a bow and held it over his head. "New bow for you, Leliana."

Another floor, a couple of dozens of undead later – what was with undead and Tevinter ruins? Did they all practice blood magic? - they arrived in a high vaulted hall with tree roots running through them. The wolf was waiting.

Except it wasn't a wolf anymore, but a tree-wolf, and then a tree-woman-wolf. Alistair blinked rapidly, then turned to Wynne with his _did I just see that_ look. He thought, again, of how much he missed having Ellyn. She wouldn't have even looked twice. Ellyn would have began negotiations with this magical thing without missing a beat.

Alistair found himself gaping at the magical thing that was tree, woman, and wolf, until it – she? - began to speak.

"Thank you for coming this far. I am the Lady of the Forest." Behind her stood werewolves. Werewolves! As in Dane and the werewolf. Beasts of legends. Alistair felt a slight moment of panic. Why wasn't anyone else panicking?

"I'm looking for someone, actually. A woman. Blonde hair, hazel eyes, really pretty, dressed in mage robes ... but I thought she was captured by the Dalish. Not you."

A werewolf jumped in front of her and snarled at him, breath so foul it nearly knocked him over when it spoke. It spoke. "She is our Lady and you will address her with respect!"

Ellyn would have stood there as if she was made of iron, and that she did not smell anything. She would calmly smile as if there was no werewolf in her face. "I apologize if I seem impolite, but her dog led us here and frankly, I'm at the end of my rope. She was captured by the Dalish and she hadn't come back. This ... this was our only lead."

"You are in the right place, mortal. I'm afraid her capture ... is partially my mistake."

She told of the dream she sent Ellyn, where the Lady hoped that whatever was left human in Zathrian might be convinced of ending the curse between them. A curse that made these werewolves, the same that infected his hunters; a curse that ran in his blood and kept him alive for hundreds of years. She told him of the humans who came to this wood centuries ago, who killed Zathrian's son and raped his daughter, who left her for dead. Zathrian used blood magic by a deal with a pride demon, bonded the wolf Witherfang to the very spirit of the Brecillian forest itself. Those humans fell prey to Witherfang and became the first werewolves.

These were their children. They paid the sins of their fathers over generations. The Lady herself had eventually emerged from the beast that was Witherfang, came to an understanding of being sentient, and tamed the beasts.

"You sent Ellyn after a pride demon?" Alistair was aghast. Their recent stint at the tower taught him that pride demons were dangerous. And huge.

"I was expecting Zathrian to treat her with respect, considering her ... station within the Elven Pantheon. I was mistaken. There was hope that he might be willing to break the curse if she was the one to speak to him, but he is now more spirit than man, and spirits ... do not forgive."

"What's done is done." Wynne spoke up behind him, "is there a way for us to get her back?"

"I know where the Dalish are. I will be willing to confront Zathrian with you and retrieve your companion. Perhaps when I confront him I can convince him to break the curse ... one last time."

"Right. We're going to travel to the Dalish camp with an army of werewolves and the Keeper's own nemesis, then we're going to expect to negotiate for my fellow Warden's release." Alistair grinded his teeth and kept thinking 'what would Ellyn do' but there was nothing there he could draw on. Ellyn would have done whatever was necessary if he was the one captured. "Lead on."

He had a feeling this could only end in tears.


	12. Tales from Arlathan

1

Ellyn hadn't been counting. Days came and days went. She spent it telling stories to the Dalish children and some of the elders who were story tellers. From her earliest memories, she recited tales of Arlathan, old heroic stories of dragon slaying, fairy tales, war histories, some of which had been lost to the Dalish since before they took the Dales.

Meals were brought to her, and a cot was placed there for her to sleep on with warm blankets. Ellyn wondered when she might be allowed to go. Meanwhile, she had tales to tell. Mythal's stories.

_There was once a King in Arlathan, his name now lost to time. The king had a beautiful Queen that he loved very much. After years – and you must know, the elves lived a long time in the old days before the fall of Arlathan – so after years of wishing for a child, his wife bore him twin boys._

Falathiel, with her twin pigtails, oohed, and she was hushed right away by the other children.

_The soothsayer was brought to them to tell of the fortunes of these beautiful children. The older boy would be a conqueror of the world, a leader of nations, and he would bring about a new glorious age for Elvhenan. The younger child, however, would grow up to kill his father._

A gasp came from the boys. Ellyn smiled. They were always zoning out until someone said 'kill.'

_The King was beside himself. They had wanted these children for so long, but the threat of his own death was too much to bear. The King asked his queen for this younger child and gave him to a trusted soldier, so that he may be killed away from his sight._

"How cruel!" Anira cried, shaking her head and setting her blond hair into a halo of activity.

"Don't worry, he'll be okay." Ellyn hushed her with a pat.

"You're ruining the story! Don't interrupt!" cried one of the boys. Alagos, was it? Ellyn was beginning to remember their names, but there were just so many of them and she only had to memorize four people's names growing up.

_The advisor took the child to the river, intending to sink him into the water with a rock, but he did not have the heart. Instead, he made a raft out of wood scavenged from the riverbank, and placed the child on it to be floated down the river. This gave the Creators the right to the child. Mythal, the Great Protector, took pity on him and guided him to an elderly couple who wished for children all their lives, and they took in the child as their own._

"Yay!" Anira cried again, huddling herself into Ellyn's lap. "I like happy stories."

"Well, I don't know about happy, but ..." Ellyn continued, and thought that all of these Elven stories were all too bloody to tell children. She gave Anira a little hug before lifting her and setting her back on the ground.

_Year passed, and they seemed to prove the prophecy true. The elder twin learned military strategy and swordplay, and became a fearsome warrior who garnered great respect within the King's armies. His father looked on and was proud. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to him, the younger twin grew kind, gentle and charismatic under his foster parents' care. He might not have been a great warrior, but he had a good soul and he gathered loyalty like none other._

_In time, the King grew old and jealous of his child. The King was a great leader to his people, but he was no general. The time his son came of age was getting nearer, and it was no secret that the People wished to expand their lands, especially with the well known prophecy of how the prince would be a great conqueror for his People._

_Maddened with paranoia, the King called his son to an audience with him, intending an exile by conquest, sending him to the farthest reaches of their kingdom. Enraged, his son attacked him, killed him in the throne room, and took the crown._

"Hey, didn't the prophecy say the younger twin was going to kill the King?" Interrupted one red-headed boy, whose name was ... Haldir. That was it. Haldir. Always one to notice the inaccuracies, or not. Ellyn put a finger up to her lips.

_The younger twin was a patriot, raised by his foster parents to be so. At the news of the King's death by patricide, he rallied the people and began a great civil war that raged for fifty years. You see, fifty years was not such long time when one lived for hundreds to a thousand. In the end, the younger twin overcame the tyranny of the older twin's rule, because when he spoke, people listened. When he needed support, it was given. For his gift from the Creators was more than might. His gift from Mythal was love and loyalty from the People themselves._

_When the younger twin took the crown not by blood, but by the support of his people, he brought about a new glorious age that lasted for a thousand years, he expanded their borders not by conquest and blood, but by trade and diplomatic means._

_And the Creator Mythal smiled on the People, and knew that it was not her that brought about their fate, and not the prophecy, for when the King asked for the younger child, the Queen gave him the elder one. When he asked a mother to send her own child to his death, the King sealed his fate. No Great Protector, not even Mythal, could compare to a mother when it came to unconditional love, and when a mother's child was taken away, it only brought undeniable vengeance._

Ellyn looked around at the awed faces and the opened mouths, agape at the 'surprise' ending of her tale. She could not help but smile. When she heard that one the first time she saw it a mile away. This might be captivity, but oh what fun. Mythal supplied the tales when she was a child, Ellyn told them and got all the credit.

The children of Zathrian's tribe was enamoured with her. These were new Elven tales. There had been no new Elven tales but for the sad few they managed to gather from tablets and ruins, so much of their history and culture forgotten. Ellyn was happy to give them whatever she could. They were even more sheltered than she was, in a way, and that fact delighted her to no end.

The First of Zathrian, whose name was Lanaya, seemed to enjoy her company as well. She stood to one side and listened to the stories, and she smiled as she saw how the children enjoyed themselves.

It was not uncommon for the Dalish to take prisoners. If the Shemlen were to wander into lands frequented by the Dalish, they did so at their own peril. Ellyn wondered if Zathrian told all the hunters who she was, or if he only told them that she was a historian of lore. They treated her with much more respect than what she expected, from all she read of the Dalish.

"So, what's the 'moral' of the story ... Haldir?" Ellyn looked at the boy expectantly.

Haldir tilted his head to one side, blinking his green eyes rapidly. "Um ... don't make a mother mad or she'll make you pay for it?"

Lanaya let out a chuckle behind them, and quickly covered it up with a cough.

"No." Ellyn ruffled his red hair, so like Cullen's, she thought for a split second before quickly shaking her head to dispel the memory. "The moral is that one quick sword thrust only brings more strife, as demonstrated by the civil war, while peaceful, diplomatic negotiation brings about long lasting peace. We should always try to reason with people before we fight them."

Falathiel pouted and looked a little apprehensive. "Did you tell us that story because of the fight I got into yesterday?"

"Oh, you started a fight yesterday? With who?" Ellyn knelt down from the bench so that she could be at eye level with the girl. Falathiel shied away.

"What about the part about mothers being more protective than Mythal?" The child decided to change the subject instead of volunteering information that might get her into trouble.

"Well, no matter how much the Creator Mythal love and protect the People and their children, no love from her can be greater than that from your own parents. And no vengeance can be greater than one whose child had been taken away." Ellyn wondered how true that could have been. After all, all mage children were taken from their parents, and their vengeance had proven to be nil. Most were glad to have had their cursed children taken.

Ellyn turned to look at Lanaya and found a strange expression on her face, a sad apprehension. The sun was about to set for yet another day. Ellyn shooed the children to their evening meal, and settled down for another night on her cot. They had been treating her with reverence; they gave her some of their best food, offerings of flowers, intricately carved combs for her hair. The People took turns to sit on the benches and listened along with the children. These were Mythal's People.

The only thing they denied her was her freedom. In this circle drawn with Zathrian's blood, she was cut off from the Fade. Without the Fade, she couldn't even contact Mythal. She was completely defenceless, and not a little lonely.

Ellyn looked up into the starlit sky. She had never slept beneath the stars before until now, and she marvelled at how beautiful it was. _Sun's blood_. That was what Mythal called it. The goddess once gathered the sun's blood and scattered them into the sky. Such beautiful stories. Maybe she would tell that particular one tomorrow.

She stole a glance at Zathrian's tent. He had been around, attending to the sick, giving counsel to the hunters. Ellyn sighed. Zathrian was not a bad keeper. The pride demon was not a bad keeper. She wondered, briefly, if it was possible to reason with a demon.

Irving tried that, remember? Things did not turn out so well.

There were so many stories, and yet they all seemed to teach the same morals. She sorted them out in her head: the stories of vengeful, unforgiving gods and spirits, self-fulfilling prophecies, numerous tales of Fen'Harel, the dread wolf.

Stories had power. Maybe one of them could sway Zathrian, but which one? All the tales of vengeance seemed to end in death. Creation, destruction, rebirth. The cycles of Elven tales.

2

Anders enjoyed the markets in Highever. It was no Denerim with its trade goods fared from all nations in Thedas, but for what it lacked in armour, it excelled in food. Minced pies, eel pies, fruit pies, he thanked the Maker for pies. The Circle Tower used to serve some kind of pie once a week, but out here, there were choices in quantity.

_I need you to travel to Denerim._

The weather was good, the sea breeze was lovely. He saw only two templars in the entire town, and that made dodging them especially easy. They had already spotted him, and apparently decided to leave him alone. From what he heard from the townsfolk, all the templars were in the Chantry. For once, he felt like he didn't need to run. It was a wonderful feeling.

_Anders!_

Except of course for that insistent voice that snapped at him all day. Mythal had left him alone for the most part, to chase cats, booze, and skirts, but today she was sending very cryptic messages _they're not cryptic at all_ for him to leave this pie Golden City of a place for something full of templars like Denerim. Holy Andraste why would he ever wanted to be in Denerim?

Anders pushed the spirit out of his head, which was easy to do. Mythal was a visitor, someone to call on for power when he needed help. He was not possessed by her. It was much harder to avoid her when he was asleep. He was not about to waste this beautiful day, voices in his head or no.

_Ellyn is in trouble._

Andraste's flaming knickers! She always had to bring up his weakness, did she? It had only been ten days – maybe a little more but he wasn't counting. He only just arrived in Highever, with its abundance of pies and lack of templars, easy sea passage to the Free Marches, beautiful women in Orlesian silks...

_I don't know where she is. The last time she called me, she was in the Brecillian Forest. Before that, she was in Denerim._

"She's with her companions. A whole group of seasoned rogues and warriors. Let them take care of her. Last time we met, she told me that Wynne was going to stay with them." Anders mumbled softly and hoped he did not appear too crazy. "What good can I do?"

_She is cut off from the Fade, Anders. There are only two way that could have happened: someone's using blood magic to hold her, or -_

"Or she's throwing a really big tantrum," he started to walk towards the alienage. Someone was always in need of a healer, and the elves knew the quickest and most discreet way of travelling between large cities. If he arranged passage now, he might be able to get to Denerim in a week.

Anders shook his head in disgust. Less pies, more templars. Birthplace of Andraste, biggest Chantry in all of Ferelden. Damn it Ellyn.

3

"... When Fenharel trapped the forgotten ones deep within the earth, the corruption spread among the first dwarves, and those who managed to escape became the dwarves we know of today. In the bowels of the earth the first dwarves still live, sustained by the sun's blood now corrupted, their bodies no longer recognizable, and they worship the forgotten ones."

"So if you dig deep enough, the forgotten ones may get out?" Anira was attempting to bury herself in Ellyn's robe. Maybe that story was a little too scary.

"Yes." Ellyn waved her hands in a spooky manner. "That's why the dwarves live so very close to the surface now, within mountains. Because the deeper you go, the closer you get to the sun's blood tainted by the forgotten ones."

"I have a question," a pale-faced child with short spiky hair; Veryan. "Do you have any stories of the Maker?"

There was a sharp intake of breath from behind her. One of the adults, probably. Who told his Elven child of the Maker? Ellyn winced. "I do, but I'm only here to tell Mythal's tales. The mother Mythal made the moon, the stars, and the People.'"

"But we don't have stories of how the world was made." Veryan wrinkled his nose.

"No, we don't. In the beginning there was the sun and the earth," Ellyn raised an eyebrow and gave him a mysterious smile. "Some stories are in the domain of Dirthamen and they remain secrets, not for us mortals to know."

"Are these stories all true?" Haldir again. Ever the skeptical one.

Ellyn tipped her head at the boy. When she was a child herself she never wondered if these stories were true, but that was before she had to memorize the Chant of Light. They couldn't possibly all be true, especially not if the Chantry was right. Maybe facts were turned around some place along the way. "They are the same as the ones related to me by the Creator herself. Feel free to incur the wrath of Mythal if you want to call her a liar."

Haldir opened his mouth to say more, then promptly snapped his mouth shut. Mythal was the mother of the Creators. The most loved and feared of all the gods. Her blessing meant one need fear nothing. Her wrath was for you to be struck from the earth as if you never lived at all. For once in her life, Ellyn could not feel her presence.

Rubbing her hands together, she missed the magic that usually came of such an action. Mages were like walking statues of electricity. They saw in more than colours, more than the five senses of the world. There was a background static that made it possible to see with one's eyes closed. In this blood circle she felt as if she was blinded.

Blinded, so that she did not see them when they came. Blinded, or she might have been able to warn the children.

It was the hunters at the edges of the camp that saw them first. Wolves, who walked on their hind legs, wolves, who spoke, wolves, who threatened with snarls and bites at the air. There was nothing, and then all at once the air was filled the sound of beasts.

At a distance, Zathrian was talking to the Lady of the Forest, the same one she saw in her dreams. Ellyn strained to listen but they were too far away, her circle at the center of the camp an invisible prison.

"Zathrian! Please! If there is any way ..." she resorted to screaming at the top of her lungs. "Let me break the curse, please -" but they were not listening to her. Alistair was there, behind the Lady. He looked at her, for a second, and moved his attention immediately back to the proceedings between the Keeper and the wolf.

"We came to talk. Just to talk. We'd like Ellyn back. That is all. Just give Ellyn back to us and we'll leave." Alistair had his palms facing out in a gesture of peace.

"You bring the werewolves here to our camp and expect me to believe that?" Zathrian's voice was arrogant and prideful as always but now it was tinged with mania. "Give me Witherfang's heart. I will trade that for your precious Ellyn."

"Zathrian, our suffering has lasted long enough." The Lady spread her arms out encompass the werewolves, "they are not the same humans who harmed you. They are themselves children. It has been centuries. Surely your retribution is spent."

"And they still the same beasts they were. My pain is eternal, as is my retribution." His eyes flared, dark and red.

Ellyn turned her attention to Lanaya, "when a Keeper is possessed by a demon, the clan must hunt and kill its own keeper. Please. If you kill him I may be able to save the others."

Lanaya did not speak. There was a hesitation in her eyes that Ellyn knew only so well – she was not sure if Uldred was a demon either, not until he admitted it. It was difficult to attack someone when they looked like a person, not an abomination. "At least take the children and run."

"We are surrounded." Lanaya shook her head slowly. There was never any doubt in her heart of what her Keeper had become, but there was too much love there – a blood debt she could never repay.

Voices were raised, Ellyn thought she might have heard Alistair yelling, and then it all went to the void. Werewolves moved fast as the wind, their movement nothing more than a streak and a whistle that cut through the air, and in its wake elves fell, staining the grass with a redness that was nearly black. A Whirlwind of claws descended on them, their leather armour much too light to withstand the assault.

Lanaya staggered to her feet bleeding from half a dozen gashes, her mage's robe hung in tatters. Ellyn screamed for the children to huddle together, facing in. Should they survive, the less they remembered, the better.

Should they survive. The thought rang in her head, clear and menacing, and she forced herself to look, to keep her eyes open, as the beasts attacked the children and tore them apart in front of her. Alago, Falathiel, Anira ...

It was her responsibility. Her sin. This was all her fault; she should never have come. She should have never agreed to come alone. She should have asked the Keeper to meet her in the forest instead. There were so many other ways this could have gone, and she chose the one wrong way.

She had begun to memorize their names.


	13. Sleeping Beauty

_(After the massive head trauma that was the last chapter, I thought Ellyn deserved a bit of fluff. Lots of dialogue coming up._

_For more on Ellyn's past, please read "The Six Year Old Who Wanted Nothing.")_

1

Alistair counted the minutes, the hours, the days. If this kept up, he would have to move onto weeks. It had been thirteen days, maybe four more hours, and he had no idea how many minutes. There was no way to tell the time when it all happened.

Ellyn hadn't spoken. She hadn't done anything, actually. He sat by her bedside, ladled soup down her throat at set hours, and Wynne's herbal mixture at another set number of hours. Morrigan urged them to all move on; Ellyn could always catch up when she wakes. Everyone passed looks between them then, a silent consensus he refused to share. _If she wakes_.

They found her inside a circle drawn with dried blood, with fresh blood puddles obliterated most of the edges, there was only the slightest hint that it was there in the first place. Wynne told him that it was blood magic that held her, magic that was no longer present due to the death of the pride demon. A fear gripped him then, sudden, that the prone form on the ground was no longer living.

A relieved sigh from Wynne indicated that she was, just barely. She had a pulse, and she yet breathed.

They made a stretcher and took her back to Denerim, Alistair allowing Fleur to lead. The Brecillian Forest proved no challenge or maze to the dog, and they made it back in three days. He housed them in Arl Eamon's estate. The Gnawed Noble simply did not have enough room, and there were guards here and some servants that still remembered him.

He had been sleeping in this chair for ten days. Wynne locked him out sometime every night, attended to Ellyn with water and rejuvenation spells, but even she could not keep him from staying the night in his chair. He read to her, spoke to her, sometimes he cried when it was very late and no one else was awake. How was he supposed to do this alone? Things seemed impossible enough with her, let alone without.

He always stopped himself, of course, not wanting her to wake to his tears. Meanwhile, he wrote letters to Orzammar to seek help with the Blight, sent word to Redcliffe of their arrival, sent servants to stock up on supplies for the long trip to Orzammar, as they would eventually have to travel there. He was running out of things to do. At least, he was running out of things he could have done without leaving her side.

Another two days, maybe, and he would have to leave her here with the servants. They would surely take care of her as well – or better – as he had, but that wasn't the point. He simply felt lost without her.

Two more nights. Alistair sat by her bed and held her hand until sleep claimed him. "You must be the templar with the rippling muscles." A voice jolted him awake, and for a moment he thought it might be Zevran, only without that smarmy Antivan accent.

"Wha...?" Alistair forced his eyes open. The servants already came in earlier and put out all the candles. As he watched, they flared alight again. There was a Tevinter mage in the room. He tensed. He could drain him, but the mage had made no threatening moves.

"Sorry. I hate the dark. Try not to drain me, okay?" The Tevinter mage had a staff in his hand, which he slowly lowered to the floor. "Not that I'm completely defenceless without it or anything, but you can at least see that I'm unarmed."

Alistair did not have his armour on. Actually, he had no shirt on. He was planning on getting dressed before bed – chair – but after trudging through the forest there and back, wearing heavy plate through the night for fear of Dalish arrows, he was happy to sit around in loose trousers for a while. He eyed his sword and shield that sat in a niche across the room. Too far.

"Don't bother. If I wanted you dead, you're dead. I could have zapped you from the door thrice over." The mage shrugged. "I'm just saying. By the way, I'm Anders. At your service."

"Why didn't you say so in the first place? I'm Alistair." Relieved, Alistair relaxed in the chair and allowed his shoulders to drop. "I was under the impression that we have guards."

"To answer your first question, I had no idea if my name might mean anything to you. As for the second, I told the guards at the gates that I'm a healer and they didn't ask for whom. You really should tighten up your security. If somebody wanted you dead, well ..." Anders smiled in his guileless way that made Alistair want to jump up and strangle the man. "There are wanted posters all over the place, you are known, and people talk. Every mercenary in the city knows the wardens are here."

"Okay, I get it. Tighten up security if I don't want us getting killed. What are you doing here at this time of night?" Alistair rubbed the grit fromhis eyes. Ten days of sleeping in a chair and he got woken up in the middle of the night by Ellyn's brother, of all people, who happened to be extremely talkative.

Anders looked around for a chair, but none were movable, so he settled on the bed next to Ellyn, opposite Alistair. "She needs me, so I'm here. Funny how that works."

"She's been in a coma for nearly two weeks. I'm about to suggest to Wynne that we go find Andraste's ashes. Again."

"She's done this before - for an entire month." Anders moved Ellyn to settle her head on his stomach, stroking her hair almost absentmindedly, as he had done so many times before. "Other kids rant and rave when they throw tantrums. Ellyn hides in the Fade."

Alistair watched them and felt a little jealous at his show of intimacy. Looking at Ellyn wasn't helping. Even unconscious, she seemed to settle in his arms. "Mages can do that?"

"No. Ellyn can do that. She's only done this once before. It was my third escape attempt and the templars roughed me up on the way back, then the Knight Commander locked me in solitary. She threw a fit at Irving, and when he refused to let me out, she just didn't wake up the next day." He smiled a little at the memory; Ellyn could be so stubborn when she wanted to be. "After a month, they dragged me out of the cellars and sent me into the Fade to get her. If it was any other mage, they'd have just let her die, but Ellyn's too much of an investment, apparently."

Alistair grounded the heels of his hands on his temples, then rubbed his eyes. "So she's just dreaming? She can wake up any time she wants to?"

"No. She created an illusion and she trapped herself in it. She is basically her own sloth demon. Don't look at her like that – she's not a monster." Anders reached across and stopped short of smacking Alistair on the head. Then he looked at his hand as if he didn't know how it got there. "Uh, sorry about that. I get twitchy when it comes to Ellyn. Speaking of which ... what did you do to her?"

"I'm sorry?" Now Alistair was just confused. His templar senses could feel the magic just pouring off Anders, even though he had made no move at all.

"You're sitting next to my sister while she's in a coma, you're half naked, and something jolted her so badly she locked herself in the Fade." Anders smiled with his mouth but not his eyes. He raised one hand, sparks of electricity danced on it, making the occasional pop that was close enough to singe his eyebrows. "I can zap you quicker than you can drain me at this range. So, templar. What did you do?"

"Nothing!" Alistair squeaked. He proceeded to explain her capture by Dalish elves, and of the massacre that took place in the camp. Alistair winced a little at the last; he really didn't mean for that to happen. He just did not think things through before agreeing with the Lady of the Forest, but even in hindsight he could not see things ending up any other way. Sometimes there was simply no happy ending that one could strive for.

Anders sat and digested the tale, some of which were unbelievable even by magi standards, but he was used to 'weird' especially where Ellyn was concerned. "Well, Alistair." For a moment, Anders appeared to be examining his nails. "Let me tell you some things about Ellyn. The most blood she ever saw in the tower before the incident – don't ask - was skinned knees, and even that she only waited to heal because she wanted attention. I come here thinking that this," he stroked her cheek with affection, frowning at the slight hollows in her cheeks and darkness under her eyes, "is just another tantrum. But now I think it's looking more like an escape."

"She was trapped in a blood mage's circle when we found her. Was she trying to escape from that?"

"No. She's not stupid enough to think that she can break out of something like that. She 's probably just trying to get away from all the killing. Tell me something, Alistair." He could feel the anger flaring again, and kept it down. First things first. "How did she end up walking in there alone, if you care about her so much?"

"She refused my help." Alistair stated, straightforwardly. She led. He followed. He respected her decisions. Simple as that.

"If a six year old girl who can't swim wants to jump into the lake by herself, do you let her?" Anders fought the urge to yell. Hadn't this man been near any children? "She has no sense of self preservation because she's never needed it. You can't let her make decisions for herself."

"You think I don't regret letting her go alone? I've been by her bedside the whole time." The headache was getting worse. Anders studied him for a moment and laid a hand on his shoulder. Healing energy coursed through him and Alistair felt a whole week and a half worth of stress leave his back. "Oh. Thank you."

Much as he hated templars, Anders couldn't bring himself to hate this man. Not malicious. Just stupid. Being mean to him would be like kicking a puppy. "I'm not sure how far away I'll be next time she does this. Don't let there be a next time."

Alistair sat up in his chair, having given up sleep for now. "Uh ... how exactly do you go about preventing something like this?"

"Don't leave her alone. That's how." Anders had no real answer aside from blame. He sighed, "now excuse me while I probably have things thrown at me in the Fade."

2

There were no windows in the circle tower. No breeze, no sunlight. Hallways curved so that it was difficult to see ahead, and it was always a surprise whom you ran into at the next corner. At least, for Anders it was that way. Anders knew everyone. At the very least, everyone knew of him.

She was always a little envious. People did not talk to her at all. When she tried to meet their eyes they looked down and away, even when she was only a small child. She heard whispers behind her as she passed. Ser Clara only told her that it was because she was special.

Ellyn didn't want to be special. It was hard to know what you wanted, however, when everything you know came from three people and books. Ellyn was used to time alone with books. Tactics. History. Irving only had so much time to spend with her, so a lot of her daily hours were spent poring over old maps and reading history books on the rebellion.

When she wasn't doing very dry reading, she spent it in meditation. Spirit healers needed control. For one as young as she was, the first few years in the tower she was practically leaking magic. Fortunately, her flares were limited to healing spells. Even so, she spent a lot of time repeating the names of the demons in order to prevent falling to them.

Rage. Hunger. Sloth. Desire. Pride.

She wondered if there was a demon named despair. If there was, well, she would have given herself up to it by now. It was a strong emotion, wasn't it? Wouldn't be very useful, or deadly, she supposed.

"You're the most talented healer we've ever had." Ser Clara used to say, while giving her the kindest of smiles Ellyn ever saw from a templar. That wasn't really true, was it? She was kept away from everyone because she was an uncontrollable abomination. She was 'special' but in what way? There was no war; she wasn't needed. Once she knew battle, she hated it. What use was she to the Dalish?

They were Mythal's People. They were her People. She allowed them to be slaughtered around her and she could do nothing but watch amidst their screams.

Familiar footsteps derailed her thoughts. "Go away, Anders."

"You don't mean that." He pushed open the curtain to her chambers and ducked inside. It was her room before the incident. The walls had doodles on them. After they cleaned the walls, they took the paint down along with the blood.

She picked up a brush off her bedside table and threw it at his head, missing him by at least a foot. "Go away. I want to be alone."

He ignored her protests and projectiles, taking wide strides to her bed where she lain amidst a mountain of cushions. When she kicked and pushed him, he wrestled her until she gave in and sobbed against his chest. "Alistair told me what happened." He settled his back into her cushions.

"If you know, why are you here? They're better off without me. They should just leave me." Ellyn clung to his neck and settled her cheek against his collarbone.

"To what?" He knew the answer, but this wasn't a conversation. It was a dance.

She said nothing, only shook her head in denial. She was dangerous. She only caused trouble. She deserved to be alone and locked away. Everything would be better if Duncan left her in the tower.

"If shame is what you feel, you need to own up to it. You can't just lock yourself away."

"Yeah, well, you can run away. I can't. There's only one way out."

"I can think of much better dreams to die in." He looked around her paint covered walls, spartan stone floors, but the overabundance of cushions was rather nice. That was not in the tower.

"I can only build what I know, Anders."

"So, live a little. Build better dreams. You can't learn anything from in here."

She shifted and laid her head on his stomach, letting the familiarity of Anders wash over her like a blanket. "I can't."

"Can't what?"

"Live with myself." She had an arm over her eyes, and Anders looked down to see that she was still crying.

"Silly girl." He tickled her under the chin, frowned a little when she batted him away without a sliver of a smile. He moved to stroke her hair instead and waited for the tears to stop. "I didn't raise you for twelve years for you to mope yourself to death."

Anders pulled a red rose out of the space behind her right ear. She reached out a hand and stopped short of touching it. "...I don't deserve beautiful things."

"Neither do I. But that doesn't stop me from taking them." He pressed the rose into her hand. It withered and curled as soon as she touched it, bled red that ran down her fingers, and turned into ashes. He raised an eyebrow along with a sad smile. "It's things like that that reminds me I'm in the Fade."

"It's how I feel." She blew on the ashes. Tendrils of ashes and smoke made a new rose for a second in the air and was gone.

"My little drama queen. Are you intending on leaving your poor brother all alone?"

"You're never alone. You never needed me."

"Nonsense."

"It's true."

"The world needs you. Isn't that enough? Alistair's been sitting by your bedside for nearly a fortnight. I don't think he can do this without you. Besides," he tipped her chin, so she would actually be looking at him. "No one really needs me either. Everyone is alone, in the end."

"Alistair can do without me. I just mess things up anyway."

"That's not true. From what he told me, it sounds like he messed everything up when you left him. Why did you do that, anyway?"

She bit her lower lip. "I don't know. The hunters asked me to come alone, so I did."

"You wanted to keep him safe."

"No. I can take care of myself."

"No you can't. Don't deny it. You just proved you can't."

"Then why did you leave me alone all the time?"

"I did not leave you 'alone.' I left you with Ser Clara. Besides, I always came home to you, didn't I?"

"There isn't a home any more. This is all there is. Look! We're home! Happy?" She gestured at the ever so slightly shimmering stone walls surrounding them, spreading her arms wide.

"Have you been drinking?"

"I wish I was."

"Drinking isn't going to help, you know. Living might."

"Who are you, Wynne?" She was not used to Anders spouting off platitudes. "Mythal warned me with her stories but I didn't listen, and that mistake cost an entire tribe of elves their lives."

"You can't be right all the time. Or most of the time. Or at all. If you worry about making mistakes, you'll never do anything. If I sat in the tower thinking about all the different ways I'm going to get caught, I'd never have gotten out in the first place."

"Like I am now?"

"Yup. You can sit here, and the world will crumble around you. If you don't do anything, there won't be ANY Dalish left. Or dwarves, or humans. If you don't wake up," he smirked, playing the blackmail card, "I might as well stay here, and the Blight will last a hundred years."

"That's not fair." Ellyn wrinkled her nose and pouted just a little.

"Life isn't fair."

"Those children shouldn't have died."

"It wasn't you who killed them. Zathrian made a deal with a pride demon. You and I both know where that leads." Anders sighed and gathered her up to hug her, setting his chin on the top of her head. "We all make choices, and they can't be all the right choices, and Maker am I one to talk for not thinking things through. You're sweet enough to make your choices with good intentions, and that's good enough. Make your decisions and don't look back."

He pulled another rose out of the air, a cream white one with just the barest hint of pink. She made no move to take it. "I still don't deserve it."

"Take it anyway." She did, and this time it remained in her hand whole, its petals flaring slightly at her touch.

3

Anders woke first, he kept his focus on her face, watching the little tell-tale tic at the corners of her eyes. When she woke, she smiled contentedly at him and he stroked her cheek. He smiled back. "Hey there, sleeping beauty."

She mumbled 'good morning' in a barely audible scratch of a voice, tried to stretch, but there just wasn't enough strength in her limbs. He began casting a rejuvenation spell.

"I'm ... uh ... just going to go get some ... tea. Yeah. And food. You're probably famished." Alistair rushed out of the room in a flash, not checking whether they heard him or not. He felt as though he saw something he shouldn't have. Something intimate. Well, they were in bed, but not that way, and they had a sibling relationship even if they were not related, so why did it feel like he was in a room with a pair of newlyweds on a honeymoon morning?

Personal boundaries was apparently not as prominent a concept to Circle mages as it was to the rest of the populace, if they were to be judged by those two.

"Rather awkward, isn't he? Totally your type." Anders tipped his head toward the door at the retreating figure of Alistair. "Does he stammer too?"

"Sometimes." The voice was a little better. Healed and just a little scratchy from disuse.

Anders was expecting outright denial. When he didn't get it, he found himself tensing up again. _Old habits die hard._ "What is with you and virginal templars?"

"I like men who play hard to get." She stuck out her tongue at him, "impossible is even better."

He made a face, deepening the crease in between his eyebrows, but his eyes stayed playful. Anders definitely did not play hard to get. "Hey, being easy is part of my charm! So? do you like this one?"

"I don't know." Ellyn pouted noncommittally. Alistair was certainly handsome and funny. She was attracted to him, but he was more of a friend than anything else. "Honest. I have no idea."

"Well, he is completely smitten with you." Ellyn's eyes went wide and let out a little gasp. "You. Are. So. Dense." He flicked the spot between her eyes with one finger, "that man has dark circles under his eyes from taking care of you this whole time."

"He says he cares for me," Ellyn gathered enough strength to sit up. The room spun a little, and she put out a hand to steady herself, Anders took it. "He has been nothing but considerate and sweet. But ..."

"But he's not impossible. You don't fool me," Anders pointed at the space where her heart was, "you have to let someone in here."

"You're in there."

"There's room for more than one, you know. Or two or Five. I've lost count, personally." that brought a string of giggles out of Ellyn. Anders was a bit infamous that way. "You can't stay a maid forever."

"The desire demons had enough fodder from the little I had with Cullen."

"You're a mage. Get used to it." He held her shoulders so she could not look away, "you're free of the Circle, Ellyn. Not many of us get that chance – don't waste your life because of stupid demons."

"You're leaving, aren't you?" Ellyn pouted, her eyes downcast. She fingered the sleeves of her long tunic nervously, hating the moment she had to see his retreating back again.

"I took a great risk coming to Denerim. Too many templars. You might want to check out the alienage if you can, by the way. There's something going on in there. Lots of Tevinters." He swung his legs off the bed and gave Ellyn a little pat on the head. "The guards are keeping the elves inside, but when I walked out of the gate he didn't try to stop me. Not that I'm complaining – it makes it easier for me to sneak back out."

Ellyn said nothing as she watched him close the door behind him. It was Anders, after all. He would always come back to her, eventually.

Alistair walked down the hall with a tray full of food and tea to find Anders leaning on the wall just outside Ellyn's door. "Will you be staying with us, then?"

"What gave you that idea?" Anders had a laugh at that as his hand came up to smooth out his hair. "No. I'm supposed to be in a coma. Needless to say, I am not travelling in an 'official' capacity, and I," he gave Alistair a pointed look, "am a runner. Don't tell Wynne I was here."

"It's just that Ellyn has a way of collecting people. We picked up an Antivan Crow last week, and he was trying to kill her." Alistair couldn't help but groan a little at the recollection of how she simply gave him another one of her 'can we keep him' looks.

"She does not 'collect.' She 'adopts.'" Anders winced, but could not stop his grin. "Though I understand perfectly. I heard that Antivan men are awfully charming."

"Don't remind me." The mention of Zevran's charm brought a shadow over his face, one that Anders promptly noted.

"If you don't watch it, he'll steal Ellyn from right under your nose."

Alistair sighed. Why did everyone had to tell him that?

"Drop the subtlety, templar. Cullen waited three years for a kiss. Here's to hoping you're a little less patient than that. Good luck. You'll need it." Anders slapped him on the shoulder, gave him one last wink and snickered at him before he slipped off into the night.

Ellyn was dozing again on the pillows when Alistair came in with his tray of food. Over the past ten days, he had plenty of time to watch her, as he observed how she weakened and paled day by day. There was colour back in her cheeks now. Alistair felt a smile creep across his face. All those days of nursing her weren't in vain after all.

He set down the tray on a side table and sat down, reached out a hand to tuck a stray lock of hair that had fallen over her eyes. His hand brushed her cheek, and he let it linger, glad to feel the heat on her face, as checking on her had become a habit. Ellyn leaned into his hand sleepily before blinking her eyes open, and when she saw that it was him, she flinched just a little, but did not pull away.

"Thank you for taking care of me, Alistair," she said, and gave him a tiny hint of a smile that wrinkled the corners of her eyes.

_Drop the subtlety_. Sod what her brother said. Ellyn was not the kind of girl who would fall for mere charms, was she? Alistair would much rather go with sincerity. He touched his forehead to hers, "you are very welcome," then he pulled her into his arms for a hug. Hugs were friendly. Hugs weren't about to scare her away. "I'm sorry that I made a mess of your rescue. Things did not exactly go according to plan."

Alistair turned to sit on the bed and he slipped an arm behind her shoulders, pulling her to rest on his own. "It wasn't your fault." Ellyn was the one who agreed to go alone and fell for the trick of a pride demon. It was done. There was more work to do. _I cannot look back. I will be paralysed if I look back._ She wondered when the grief would eventually catch up to her. Then, because curiosity got the better of her, "what was the plan?"

"Follow the dog and let the Lady do the talking." She laughed, and it was wholehearted and infectious. "What? That's what I always do, except I follow you and you do all the talking."

"So I guess Fleur's been getting extra meat bones?"

"She's been getting entire hunks of meat with bones. You're going to have a fat dog. Now we just have to work on you." He pulled the tray off the side table and laid it on her lap. "Eat up. I'll fill you in on everything you've missed."

While she wolfed the food down – and she never even thought she was hungry until after the first bite, then she realized was famished – Alistair related the recent events. They could no longer get help from the Dalish, but the Lady and her Werewolves decided to ally with the Grey Wardens. He watched her reaction closely, but aside from a slight knotting of her brows, she did not seem overly distressed.

"One more thing." He reached over and opened the bedside table, returning with a small sealed vial of something red in his palm. "The Lady asked me to give you this. She said something cryptic like 'it will be of use to her.'"

The vial was made of crystal and felt icy cold to the touch. Probably what a phylactery might look like, she thought. She watched the red liquid flow from one end of the vial to another as she turned it. On an impulse, she laid it across one palm and allowed her natural healing aura to spread and engulf it.

Memories came quick as a flash flood, drowning out all other sensations. She stood in the middle of a temple, elves dressed in green iridescent armour hidden behind banisters and large stone pillars; human mages rushed through the gates and there was a great battle. She saw the armoured elven warriors cast spells of fire and ice, and suddenly she realized how the veil in the Brecillian Forest became so badly torn. The sound of magic hummed around her, became a roar in her ears, flashes of bright light turned to pinpoints unto darkness.

When she came to, Alistair was in front of her with his hands on her shoulders, his face full of concern. "Wow," was all she said when she finally found her voice again.

Alistair gave out a long sigh when she finally spoke, and only then knew that he was holding his breath. "What happened? I sensed magic, but I thought you might have passed out."

"This is a trapped spirit. It gave me the knowledge of an arcane warrior." She closed her palms and concentrated entropy magic into the vial. When she opened it again, the liquid inside was black, the spirit released.

"You know, I've been missing your deadpan reaction to weird." Alistair slid back into place next to her, "the whole time we were planning your rescue, I kept thinking about what you'd do, if you were in my place. There was a talking tree and a mad hermit. No joke. I must have gawked at the Lady like an idiot."

She pictured Alistair's face when he saw a talking tree, and subsequently giggled.

"Morrigan thought it was awfully funny that I let Fleur lead us."

"What, that wasn't a joke?"

"Nope, and I just managed to make myself look even less heroic." He gave her shoulder a little squeeze, then tipped his head down to meet her eyes. "I'm hopeless without you."

Ellyn felt a tingle on her scalp as blood rushed to her cheeks. She wondered what this feeling was. Alistair was so close she could feel his breath on her face, smelling of mint and honey – when he prepared tea for her, he must have had some. He touched her cheek and stroked a line across the space under her eye with his thumb; her eyes fluttered closed and her lips parted imperceptibly. Suddenly, she felt her face being pulled downwards an inch, a kiss placed on her forehead, and he pulled his arm behind her away.

Alistair sat on the edge of the bed, away from her, hands clasped behind his head. "You must be, um, tired. I'll just be in the next room over. Shout if you need anything." He got up without turning around and within seconds, he was gone, disappeared into the adjoining room, leaving a very bemused Ellyn behind.


	14. Disguises

_Ellyn Amell_

_Born 9:12 Eluviesta 2 Denerim_

1

Alistair woke the next day to the sound of Ellyn rummaging in the courtyard, in Bodahn's wagon. Bodahn was a dwarf that travelled with them, and in exchange for the protection the Wardens provide, the dwarf carried all their extra armour and supplies on his wagon. No room for passengers, unfortunately.

The sound of armour clanging could be heard across the courtyard and into the window of his room that overlooked it. "What are you doing?"

"What does it look like? Come help me, will you?" said Ellyn, looking up from a mishmash of plate she collected. "I have no idea which piece goes with what piece and where. The only thing I know how to put on is templar armour, and impersonating a templar is a crime punishable by hanging, I think."

Alistair laughed heartily out of the window and joined her in the courtyard soon after, dressed in his tunic and trousers. "Are you sure you can do this?"

"Let me show you something. Give me a hug!" Ellyn hummed a spell to herself and opened her arms wide. He raised an eyebrow at her, wondering what that was all about, but stepped into her arms anyway. She brought them around his waist, and after one single squeeze, she picked him up. He squealed like a little girl and she immediately set him down, giggling the whole time while he stared at her as though she just grew horns.

"What just happened and what have you been eating to gain supernatural strength? Magic spinach?" Alistair gaped at Ellyn while she turned back to the pile of metal.

"It's a spell that allows me to use mana for strength. The more power I have as a mage, the stronger I am when I sustain the spell." Ellyn turned to their stock of swords, and picked out a thin blade that was practically a rapier. "Spellweaver. I knew I would be able to use this someday."

"Don't swing that around when I don't have my shield, please. I prefer my insides ... inside." Alistair ducked out of a wild swing that nearly disemboweled him, examining the pile of platemail. "Are you joking? You can't start with plate mail. I was wearing splint only two months ago! It takes a lot of practice to walk in plate."

He was halfway through sorting the medium armour when Ellyn interrupted him. "That green metal – I've seen that before." She laid a hand on the green metal, and felt the magic inside her resonate at the touch. It was the same colour and design as the ones worn by the arcane warriors she saw in her vision. "Where did you get this?"

"In the ruins in the Brecillian forest, guarded by a dragon," Alistair pulled out the matching helm, gloves, and boots. He looked thoughtful for a few seconds, before walking to the other side of the wagon and came back with a shield decorated in the heraldry of Redcliffe. "You might as well learn to use a shield as well. You get hit by arrows way too often."

Ellyn glared at him. He was right, of course. When there were archers, she hid behind Alistair like a scared little girl. "Now, what do I wear under all this metal?"

Three hours and two trips to Wade's later, she was suited up in a set of ancient Elven armour, sword and shield in hand. Alistair found out shortly that Ellyn was a surprisingly quick study. She moved effortlessly and appeared to possess eyes on the back of her head; Ellyn explained it as another layer of vision provided by her ability to 'see' mana. Her sword work, on the other hand, was nonexistent. Ellyn kept hitting things with the flat of her sword and the only time it connected with the training dummy was when she pushed her sword straight forward. "You can't just jab forward repeatedly. Even a Genlock can figure out your moves. You have to learn to feint."

Alistair stood behind her and guided her through the moves; vertical slashes to disarm, horizontal to wound, shield bash to follow. Feint to the head, wait for the block, slash to the legs. He taught her to keep her shield up in front of her chest, just under her eyes. He noticed how small she was – half-crouched in a battle stance, she was more than a full head shorter than him.

The way she laughed seemed completely alien. He had heard her laugh before, of course, but it was different. Adrenaline filled laughter, an unguarded sound of her being simply happy, filled the courtyard, and Alistair found himself having fun. For the first time since he met Ellyn, he was not nervous, scared, frustrated or angry, but comfortable.

2

Ellyn had never felt so free. Yes, she had been free of the Circle for three months, but this – this was different. She was free of magic. Not entirely, of course, she still relied on her connection to the Fade for strength, but with a blade and shield on her back, she was free of the burden of 'mage.' She walked to the left-hand side of Alistair instead of behind him, felt almost like an equal, of sorts, instead of some fragile doll who was to be protected.

She was so used to the label of mage by now,that she expected the glances of suspicion wherever she went. In head to toe armour, Ellyn felt like a different person, her laughter strange to her own ears.

"She's happy." Wynne remarked over dinner, sitting across from Alistair. Ellyn had been so exhausted by the training that she fell asleep in her armour at sundown.

"You sound surprised," Alistair picked up a fresh, steaming half-loaf of bread and practically soaked it in butter. "She called the Circle her 'home.' She wasn't happy there?"

"She was content." Wynne handed Alistair a knife for the bread. He didn't take it, instead started eating the whole half-loaf from the end up. "Alistair, if you're going to be a King at some point, you might want to work on your table manners."

Alistair ignored her chastising and tried to get them back on topic. "I don't think I've ever heard her laugh like that."

"Nor I." Wynne continued. "I can't claim to know her very well – none of us did, save Irving and Anders of course. Looking back on things, I see that Irving tasked her with keeping everyone happy, while she ignored her own state of mind."

"That's ... a terrible way to live." Alistair reached over to the spare plates and began to load it up with more food.

"Arl Eamon wants you to be king, and you have no real say in it. Ellyn was being groomed to be Ferelden's secret weapon against the Orlesians, but I doubt that's what she wants for herself." Wynne stared at Alistair's new plate. The meat was hanging off its sides. "Ellyn will be happy working in a hospital in Denerim, preferably if she also gets to travel into the alienage every week."

"Fighting darkspawn and watching entire villages die wasn't on her agenda, I take it?"

"Not at all. Are you eating all that?" She pointed at the loaded plate: mashed potatoes, roast chicken, sliced ham, steamed vegetables, all of it covered in thick gravy.

"No. This is Ellyn's plate." Alistair balanced the food laden plate on one hand and some cutlery in another. "Somebody's got to take care of our warrior princess."

"Alistair. Need I remind you that she's a mage?" Wynne said, leaning back in her chair as he got up to go. "And you are going to be the King of Ferelden?"

"Yes, yes. And we can all die tomorrow, and if not tomorrow, maybe next week."

Wynne fixed him with a hard stare. "If it comes down to duty to her country or duty to you, she will always choose Ferelden."

"And I would do the same." Alistair turned away and took the most direct route to Ellyn's room. He had already convinced everyone to stay for another week in Denerim, giving him more time to pick up jobs and supplies around town before they leave for Orzammar. The truth was, he was not crazy about going to Orzammar – the place where Grey Wardens went to die.

It could also have been because Ellyn's birthday was coming up in four days, and he wanted to take her to Bann Teagan's estate. There was a rose garden there his last visit, and he was sure Ellyn would like that. His uncle assured penned a missive to Denerim ensuring a welcome for them in his estate, should he chose to stop off along their journey. The garden would just be the icing on the cake, so to speak.

Ellyn's door was open, and he found her as the last time he saw her: lying face down on her bed in full armour. The only thing she bothered taking off was her helm. Once again he was reminded of how young she looked, especially in her sleep. Both of his hands were occupied, so he resorted to kicking her foot with a boot.

"Go away." Ellyn smacked her lips sleepily and turned her face away from him. "It's not morning yet."

Alistair moved the plate back and forth in front of her nose. "Aren't you hungry?"

"My stomach's eating itself just fine, thank you. I have fallen and I can't get up." She raised one arm shakily, then the other, and dropped both back down again. "It hurts."

"That's what happens when you train for six hours non-stop on your first day in armour." He smirked at her, "just wait until you get up in the morning."

"Speaking from experience, I take it?" Ellyn finally managed to push herself up to her forearms, and she stared at the food – using it as a sort of motivational tool – and pushed until she was upright again.

"You have no idea. The first time I was given a real sword and shield, I went at it for over nine hours." Alistair reached out and pulled off her boots as she worked on the numerous buckles. "The muscles I didn't know I had were burning when I got up the next day."

"I can just heal it, I guess." Ellyn pulled off the reinforced gloves, turning them over as she did so. They shimmered beautifully in the candlelight like butterfly wings. "But if I do it'll feel like cheating."

"It hurts a little less everyday if you keep it up. With the way we draw trouble, you'll probably be keeping it up. I wouldn't worry about it."

She munched on a chicken leg thoughtfully, eschewing the utensils for now. "You mean to say that if I just grit my teeth and take the pain, I'll be stronger tomorrow?" Her face broke into a smile, all chicken grease, gravy, and twinkly eyes, "I think I'd like that."

She sat there with her plain grey silk shift and leather tights, grease dripping down her face, smelling of sweat and ... honey, because Ellyn always smelled like honey, and she somehow managed to be everything he could ever want.

There was a part of her that considered herself below any man's attention simply because she was a mage. Wearing armour changed that a little bit, at least with the disguise she could leave her magi status behind, if only until she cast a spell in public.

He wanted to kiss her, chicken grease and all, but it was too soon. Ellyn was friendly and affectionate with everyone, but there was that last wall there that she allowed no one to breach. Alistair was determined to let her know, eventually, that she above all people deserved love. This selfless, insecure slip of a girl who managed to bumble her way through any situation in spite of her inexperience deserved more than he was ever able to give.

Alistair settled with taking her plate at the end of the meal and calling a bath for her before heading off to his room. Maybe the rose garden was a bad idea. Too many romantic connotations. Perhaps he could pick out something at the Wonders of Thedas and throw a party here in the estate. Last time she was here, she spent all her time in the library – excited over ancient maps and war strategy books, of all things.

2

"Fight fair!" cried Zevran. The clang of metal on metal filled the courtyard. It wasn't even seven bells yet, the marketplace in front of the estate deserted in the grey morning light.

"Not if you don't!" Ellyn shouted over the din, turning to one side without looking and blocked a twin dagger strike to the knee, followed by a quick run with her shield, then a feint to the back of the rogue's knees that led to him sprawled on the ground – too easily. She stepped over to help Zevran, only to be flipped onto her back and a dagger placed over her neck in one swift move.

"Never, ever help an assassin up, my dear lady." He withdrew the weapon and pulled her up instead. She held Spellweaver in front of her, mumbled a quick spell, and took a few steps back with slightly bent knees. Not bad for a beginner, thought Alistair as he observed from the shadows behind his window.

He watched in horror as Ellyn shouted a battle cry and the rogue rushed her with both daggers out in a cross slash. She made no move to dodge him. Under his eyes she seemed to shimmer and turn into a ghost, then Zevran's daggers went right through her, followed closely by the rogue himself. As he lost his balance, Ellyn spun on one heel and slashed her sword sideways on the heavy metal part on the back of his armour.

"Yield!" The rogue was on the ground again, and she was jumping up and down in joy.

"That was cheating. Tsk tsk." Zevran shook his head at her and hopped up with a quick roll of his waist. "Eyes on the back of your head and ... whatever it is that you just did. I would hardly call that fair."

"Nope. But I'll live." Ellyn sheathed her sword, signifying the end of the duel for now.

Zevran did the same, the daggers clicking into their clips on his back. "My beautiful and deadly warden. Care to explain what you just did in our little very unfair fight?"

"Combat magic. It's sustained. The more mana I channel into the spell, the more of myself is in the Fade. When I saw you coming at me I just gave myself a few seconds fully in the Fade. You can't fight dreams."

"Somehow I imagined dreams of you would be a little more ... titillating." Zevran leered at her, stepping closer.

"My dreams are rather boring actually. It's all stone walls and empty hallways."

"This tower of yours sounds awfully depressing. It is no place for our beautiful sex goddess." He leaned close to her, stopping mere inches from her face. Alistair considered heading down stairs to rescue her, but -

The look on Ellyn's face was priceless: somewhere between horror and amusement. "... excuse me? I'm hardly -"

"I do not need to repeat myself. You are a beautiful woman, I simply speak the truth." Zevran cut her off, assuming she meant to be humble about her looks.

"The words 'maiden' and 'sex goddess' are mutually exclusive, Zevran." She pointed it out as if explaining vocabulary to a foreigner. "I can't be a virgin and a sex goddess. That wouldn't make any sense!"

"I can remedy that, if you wish. It will be much more enjoyable a first experience for you if you are with someone ... more skilled," Zevran smiled like a wolf, "like I."

Ellyn giggled, chortled, and eventually snorted, probably permanently destroying her 'sex goddess' status in the process. "Oh Zevran. No. You remind me too much of my brother. Especially when you talk like that."

"Oh?" He was momentarily speechless. Alistair had to cover his mouth to avoid giving himself away, or he'd have snorted too.

"You shouldn't feel the need to ingratiate yourself to me, Zevran. You owe me a blood debt. Mages take that kind of thing very seriously." Ellyn patted him on the back with a gloved hand, while Zevran was still locked into that shocked expression. "I spared your life. It means I'm responsible for you."

Ellyn walked back into the estate, all smiles, leaving Zevran bewildered in the courtyard. Alistair couldn't hold it anymore and let out a small chuckle. Zevran gave him a dirty look. "I don't believe I have ever been rejected so ... skillfully. She made it sound like she was doing me a favor."

"For what it's worth, you do remind me of her brother," Alistair shrugged and tried not to look too smug about their little exchange.

"By that you must mean that he is handsome, charming, and roguish, no?" Zevran turned on the charm, this time aiming it straight at Alistair.

"No. I was thinking more along the lines of slippery, full of himself, and indiscriminate." Alistair slipped away from the window, hoping to catch Ellyn in the dining room, "but nice try."

3

Ellyn threw herself into weapons training, restricting for the most part to Alistair's defensive style. Leliana tried teaching her archery, but that proved to be a complete lost cause, since her aim was absolutely terrible; she missed constantly due to the fact that spells travelled in a straight line regardless of wind conditions or range, while arrows depended on physics. Eventually she figured out a way to combine telekinesis with arrows so that they always hit the mark, but it cost more mana than a spirit bolt, which did more damage.

When she wasn't training in armed combat, Wynne worked on filling out the rest of her spirit spells. Primal was a total loss; she was able to conjure all the elements, but they wouldn't leave her fingers, so her Cone of Cold had a range of exactly two inches. They were adequate for things such as sterilizing, cauterizing wounds, and icing swollen wounds, but that was all they were good for.

Once she mastered all the spells she was able to cast, which was anything not destructive, she bent the rest in experimentation. Keeping the effects small, she practised on the rooftop well away from the sight of the chantry.

"Alistair, check this out!" She yelled down from the ledge. He squinted at her, with the sun behind her back. "If this doesn't work, you'll have to catch me!"

"I have to what -" Alistair started, but all he heard was the squeal as she jumped off. The estate had high ceilings, so even though it was only two floors above ground, she was jumping from about thirty-five feet up. He ran up and made to catch her as she fell, but she stopped just short of his arms. "Don't scare me like that!"

Ellyn levitated mere inches above him. Noting his outstretched arms, she reached out and wrapped her own around his neck before dispelling her force field. As soon as the magic dissipated, she landed squarely in his arms in a princess hold before she started babbling at a mile a minute. "So, Fleur was jumping around, and I had this idea, so I cast force field on her, and then she just floated – so I figure I'd try it myself."

"You had to test that from the roof?" Alistair was about to let her down, but Ellyn seemed in no hurry to let go of his neck. He was beginning to notice her need for bodily contact of late – not in an erotic way, but like an animal being scratched. If someone she trusted touched her, she leaned into it like a cat.

Ellyn kicked her legs and jumped down, landing heavily on her feet – rogue she was not, thought Alistair. "It's more fun that way."

"Speaking of fun," Alistair had been planning this for days. "What do you say we ditch training and lessons today and go shopping?"

"Uh... shopping? With you?" Ellyn said with unsubtle incredulity.

"Is that a no?" Alistair stumbled over his words a little at the possible rejection.

"No. I just wasn't expecting that from you. That was totally something Leliana would say." Ellyn put on an Orlesian accent that was more Isode than Leliana, "'let's ditch lessons today and go buy new shoes!'"

Alistair chuckled, "do you want to buy new shoes? I'm sure Wade can come up with something."

"I'm not sure if I want to wait six months for new boots. I do want to go shopping though." She contemplated for a moment, "there was this pastry shop I saw here last time that had these multiple layer cakes that Sten would absolutely love. I wanted to pick up some hair ribbons last time for Leliana but we didn't have time ..." Ellyn started counting off the things she wanted to buy.

Alistair listened and wondered if he should have had vellum with him to record the entire list down. This was going to be one big shopping trip. "Don't you want anything for yourself?"

"Hmm?" She stopped mumbling over what to buy, instead turned to Alistair with a vague, blank expression that was strangely unsettling. "Um, no. I don't need anything."

"I asked you if you wanted anything. Sure, we have everything we 'need.' We probably picked up enough lyrium dust to keep all the templars in Ferelden high for a month, enough dry biscuits and beef for the deep roads for six, extra blankets and such in case it gets too cold," Alistair listed off some of the things he had been preparing while Ellyn was unconscious. "But what do you like? You know, if I want to get you something for, um, Satinalia, what would you like?"

"Satinalia's not for another seven months, Alistair."

"Summerday, then." Alistair pressed on, even though he had a distinct feeling that the look on Ellyn's face resembled that of a mouse being cornered by a very hungry cat.

Ellyn's eyes darted to the left, and then to the right, avoiding his gaze. No one had ever asked her what she wanted before. When Anders got her a present – flowers, stuffed animals, and so on – he simply gave without asking her opinion. Being asked what she wanted also brought up strange flutters in her heart that wasn't nice at all. "Books? And, um, maps?"

"Anything specific? You like books, I like food, but I specifically like cheese. What kind of books do you like?"

She almost blurted out 'history' or 'warfare,' and stopped herself just in time. They weren't books she wanted. They were books she had to read under tutelage. If she wanted a book, it would be the one that Anders used to read to her, the one with all the fairy tales. That sounded incredibly childish, so she gave it a slight change. "I like books on folk lore."

"See, that wasn't so hard, was it?" He gave her a lopsided grin.

They spent most of the afternoon in the market disguised as themselves: mage and templar escort. While she browsed the wares, Alistair watched her, noticing which stall she spent most of her time at, the trinkets she was most interested in. Ellyn nearly broke into a run when she saw the Orlesian bakery, where the delicate cream and butter pastries were arranged in neat rows behind thin sheets of Antivan glass.

The outside of the shop belied the treasures within; there were confections made of spun sugar, marzipan bunnies, chocolate truffles, delicate saffron biscuits, meringue cookies amongst the soft breads and cakes. Ellyn ended up buying out much of the fresh limited stock and had it sent to the estate. "Sten will love this place!"

It was near supper time and she still hadn't gotten herself anything. "Do you want to go to the Wonders of Thedas? Wynne wanted me to pick up some recipes."

Dinner was cold by the time they got back. Ellyn found Sten sitting in the library with a plate of meringue and spice cookies, munching appreciatively. The rest of the treats were lined up all along the table. Ellyn took the biggest plate and loaded it down with cream puffs and layered cake. She exchanged a moment with Sten, her grinning cheekily, him silent, but she spotted his too subtle smile nonetheless, before she took the plate to her room.

Alistair turned the book over and over in his hand. It was written in Arcanum, which the tranquil proprietor assured that a Circle mage would be able to read. There were colour illuminations along with every opening section, gold and silver leaf worked into the parchment. Flipping through the pages randomly, he came upon an illustration of a princess in a tower, her incredibly long golden hair hanging out of a small window, and a prince at the foot of the tower with one arm stretched out.

It struck him rather oddly, that the tower looked a lot like Kinloch Hold, and the princess resembled Ellyn. Then again, she had classic noble features, and the Circle Tower was built by Tevinters. Maybe he could point it out to her later.

The fact that he had no idea what was written in it, other than the fact that it was a collection of folklore from Tevinter, kept him from knocking on their adjoining door. He kept the room even after she awoke from her long sleep. After almost losing her not once, but twice, he wasn't taking chances. He stood in front of the door and fidgeted, thinking up excuses for the month early Summerday gift, when he heard the sound of something being thrown at the wall.

Most men would retreat to the sitting room in this situation, getting as far away from the angry female as possible, but not Alistair. Without thinking, he opened the door with a single warning knock.

Ellyn huddled in the middle of her four-poster bed, staring at the silver plate that landed on the carpet after hitting the wall. The carpet was a mess; layered cake now disassembled were scattered all over, along with globs of butter cream. Alistair stepped around the mess gingerly, stopping at the side of the bed. She didn't seem to notice him. He leaned in a bit closer and touched her on one shoulder. She was shaking.

Alistair sat down next to her on the bed, and she slid toward him a little from his weight on the mattress. "Ellyn?" He called to her, but her attention remained firmly on the silver plate. When she did eventually turned her face to him, there was a fear in her eyes that he never saw in there before, not even while facing Uldred.

"I ... didn't mean to do that." Ellyn pointed at the discarded pastries. "I'm sorry I made a mess."

"Don't worry about it. Fleur will love cleaning that up." If she was adamant in pretending nothing was wrong, so would he, but he wasn't about to leave her alone with the evil hysteria-inducing sweets. "Do you want to -"

"No." She snapped at him. "There's nothing to talk about. It was an accident."

How would one describe a memory that did not exist or that some things simply gave her emotions without context? How was she supposed to know what it all meant – the Chantry gave her peace, cream puffs made her frightened, who knew what would make her strike out in terror? Anders remembered things all the way back to when he was four or so, and she could not remember anything before six. There was a gap there, where she apparently learned how to walk and talk and all of those childhood things, without actually remembering anything at all.

"Can I sleep with you tonight?"

Alistair was momentarily thunderstruck. Then of course, the realization kicked in. When someone like Ellyn said 'sleep with me' that was exactly what she meant, and if one was to joke about it, it would only serve to make her feel dumb. "Of course you can."

Alistair tucked her into his bed and lain on top of the blankets, holding her hand until she finally fell asleep. Maybe all mages were mad to a certain degree, and it diminished with age. Or maybe only the sane ones lived to be as old as Wynne. Considering the amount of death Ellyn had seen in the past few months, it wasn't surprising if she went a little crazy.

She twitched in her sleep beside him, and he figured that it was probably a nightmare. Alistair stroked her hair and watched as the little furrow between her brow disappeared. Not for the first time in their journey, he wanted to know what went on in that head of hers. Ironically, as did she.


	15. Lessons in Pragmatism

1

They departed from Denerim the next day. Staying in one place for too long was a risk they could not afford to take. Anders already warned Alistair of how well known they were already, and their location was no secret. It was a matter of time before the 'Regent' Loghain Mac Tir sent his mercenaries after them.

It was Ellyn's decision to investigate Levi Dryden's claims of the abandoned mining tunnels that led to an old Warden's Keep. She knew next to nothing about the Grey Wardens other than what Alistair knew – which wasn't much – and what she was able to feel on her own, namely the effects of the tainted blood. If there was a Grey Warden fortress at Soldier's Keep, she could not afford to pass up the opportunity.

There was always a possibility that they would fail on their journey, and the Blight would rage in Ferelden unchecked. If she could find documents on the Joining ritual, then the job of killing the Archdemon could fall on someone else. There was no guarantee; but if what Levi Dryden stated in his letter is correct, and the Wardens died with their besiegers at the Keep, then everything the Wardens needed to conduct the joining would still have been there.

"These are not exactly concise directions, my friend." Zevran looked over Ellyn's shoulder as they sat among their bedrolls surrounding a group of spell wisps. Ellyn only brought the mages, Zevran, and Alistair with her through the tunnels, leaving the rest of her friends with Levi out near an old inn a short walk near the entrance. As much as Levi could act as their guide, it was too risky to lead an unarmed man through the tunnels, or so she thought.

The tunnels were so clear of any danger that she might as well have brought Levi with her. It was almost too quiet, and too unguarded. Ellyn expected giant spiders at the very least, and yet halfway through the tangled map of tunnels marked by nothing but old tracks and stone cairns, they encountered nothing alive. It made her uneasy, to say the least. There was only one reason why even spiders did not inhabit this space – something much more dangerous was keeping them away.

'We're about halfway through, right here." Ellyn pointed to a red spot over the map, and gestured at a red mark on the wall that was mostly still intact. "If we start at about six bells we can arrive at the Keep by noon."

They did arrive, eventually, but it was not noon. With the sky overcast in a nondescript off-white and the sun's position indeterminate, it was hard to tell when it really was, aside from the hint of redness at the edge of the horizon all around them just beyond the trees that told of a sunset sky. The air smelled of electricity, blood, and dead old mouldy things.

A fortress stood ahead, its gates and towers built in the old Ferelden style – solid stone and unsplit timber, built to withstand the centuries. Its gatehouses stood thirty feet high, the masonry nearly perfectly preserved as if repaired everyday since the Glory age. The keep itself rivalled the size of Redcliffe castle, big enough to host an army of hundreds. A large set of stairs ahead ended in a small landing that led to a pair of solid oak doors reinforced with iron.

Alistair shifted his footing, pushing snow out of his way. Snow? It was the 3rd of cloudreach; it was beginning to feel warm in Denerim, green buds dotted the trees, signalling the emergence of spring. The tunnels they came from dipped and rose, so their altitude could have changed, but not likely by this much. He looked ahead of him to Ellyn, and she was doing the same thing, staring at the snow covering her feet in disbelief.

A halo outlined her figure, a thin glow of blue that glittered, disappearing whenever he focused on it, coming back into his vision just as soon as he looked away. Morrigan and Wynne, the other two mages, had the same aura effect around them, but theirs were less prominent, their connection to the Fade less direct. Before he had a chance to ask her what was going on, a vision of a battle unfolded before them.

Soldiers wearing the standard of Denerim surrounded the Keep, campfires dotted the small courtyard. There were sounds, of trees falling, wood being cut, and stone hoisting up the hill from whence they came, in the mines behind. A commander of Denerim shouted orders. There was a siege here, at some point in time, and the memories lingered.

"Skeletons!" Alistair rushed ahead of her just in time to feel the thudding of arrows as they embedded into his shield, Ellyn casting a barrier around both of them as she readied her weapons, releasing a quick mind blast that sent the skeletons nearest them to the ground.

"I'm going to buy us a bit of time, but it's going to be confusing." Ellyn sheathed her weapon after her few quick slashes to the bare bones of the undead proved ineffective. Instead, she reached out with her newly acquired spirit magic – those few spirit spells that she had stayed away from previously that was so close to blood magic that she refrained from using in public. With one wave of her hand, she raised a small skeleton army of her own, and they rushed out to meet the archers with bone-crushing maces. "Morrigan, now!"

A blizzard broke out over the already frigid landscape, freezing the skeletons in place. Wynne aimed her mana into the ground, and the resultant earthquake shattered the bonds that held the undead together. All that was left were little piles of bones in the snow.

"What, not going to leave me anything to kill?" Zevran twirled his daggers, stepping out from behind the two mages.

"Laying out traps is important too."

"Judging by all we encountered in those tunnels, I'd say we're probably fishing in a puddle. But I will do as it pleases you, my dear warden."

"Nevermind that." Alistair stared at Ellyn's shimmering blue aura, finally reaching out gingerly to touch it. "Am I seeing things?"

Ellyn waved one hand in front of her face, watching the aura following along casting trails as it moved. "The veil is ... torn."

Around them, bones lying amidst the snow began to stir. Zevran sprinted up the stairs and pulled the doors open. The rest of them followed, but not nearly as fast as the assassin. By the time Morrigan reached the doors, Wynne was starting to fall behind, the skeletons threatening to overwhelm her.

Ellyn ran halfway back down the stairs, casting a barrier on Wynne to keep the archers at bay, and turned a few of the skeletons for confusion before dashing through the doors herself. Alistair pulled Wynne through the doors quickly, the elderly mage nearly stumbled. Ellyn warded the door just in time. As soon as they were inside, the sound of the undead outside faded away.

They were greeted by vision after vision inside the keep, the scenes of Wardens being starved until weakness claimed them, while the soldiers laid siege to the castle; Avernus summoning demons in desperation when the siege finally broke; blood magic so powerful and costly, the veil torn in the process.

When Ellyn finally found Sophia Dryden's corpse, possessed by a demon, it surprised Alistair that she was willing to speak with it. Ellyn hadn't learned to hide her tells yet, and Alistair was not about to let her know what they were. It was a simple deal. Sophia would seal the veil, making the keep habitable again, and all Ellyn had to do was let her walk free.

Ellyn seemed to agree, and as she did, Alistair spotted the tell tale squint of her eyes, a second longer than necessary. She glanced back at Zevran, and the assassin tipped his chin up without meeting her eyes. Alistair felt a small pang of jealousy over the small, unspoken signal. This man had only been with them since just before their trip to the Brecillian Forest, and they already communicated without words.

Wynne and Morrigan seemed to have caught her signal as well, and said nothing. When Sophia finished sealing the veil, she turned as if to speak, and Zevran ran up with his twin daggers and separated her head from her body in one quick motion.

Ellyn picked up the head with both hands and set it next to the body with reverence. "Can we...?" She gave Alistair a plaintive look as she smoothed back a lock of hair from Sophia's face. It was a ghoul's face, rotting flesh hanging off its cheekbones, eyes glassy and sightless, but once upon a time, she was a beloved commander of the Grey.

"Of course." Alistair sat down next to her and began stripping the armour off Sophia Dryden, finally leaving her in her gambeson and leather breeches. "Where do you want to do this?"

"With the veil repaired, we can go outside now. No more skeletons. Well, no more skeletons that get up to attack us." Ellyn turned to the mages and the assassin resting by the fireplace, "we'll be back. Warden business."

The Wardens discovered that it was mid afternoon, the sun no longer hovering at the horizon, the illusion of sunset gone with the veil repaired. They left Sophia in the middle of the courtyard while they gathered firewood. It took them nearly an hour to find enough dry wood amongst all this snow to build a pyre. Ellyn handed Alistair one small lit branch with her limited magic, and the pile of half-dry wood roared into flames, crackling and popping as the moisture turned to steam.

The last two Wardens of Ferelden stood in front of the fire, and neither of them knew what to say. There ought to have been a rite in the passing of a warden, but the knowledge was lost to them. When she was younger, Mythal called her a 'fledgeling' as a form of endearment before she learned other terms. She never felt more of a fledgeling than she did now, in a silent funeral with the only brother she was allowed to have. She reached for his hand and held it as she stood by his side, and though she was sure he looked her way as she did so, she kept her gaze ahead until the body of Sophia Dryden was dust, lost to the high winds of Soldier's Peak.

Ellyn turned to him, finally, and spoke so softly her voice was barely audible, "if I die -" Alistair placed a finger in front of her lips to silence her, and he nodded once, solemnly.

2

Avernus wasn't evil. Not exactly. Pride demons did funny things to people, though of course it took a prideful person to consider making a deal with one. The most powerful of all emotions, it blinded him to all else, made him consider his cause 'just' regardless of the price, in spite of the atrocities he brought to his fellow wardens. Ellyn had to remind herself that she needed him, and that it was not her place to judge. Anything to end a blight, even sparing a blood mage.

She cursed her luck as she needed him, at least until the blight was over, and judging by how long blights lasted in the past, it could be a hundred years. He said he did not have much time, that his extended stay in the keep was near over, but she was not so sure. Perhaps he only told her that so she would spare his life; she ended Sophia's, she could end his easily enough, and he could see that, if blinded to all else.

Avernus knelt and waited for her sword to fall. Ellyn turned around and sent the others to wait for her near the entrance; whatever her decision here, it was 'warden business.'

In the end, she allowed him to live, on the condition that his research would be ethical, though how he would hold to that promise, she did not know. The man might not be capable of telling good from evil anymore. Ellyn knew, deep in that part of her that judged herself more harshly than anyone else could judge her, that she was being weak. There was every reason to kill this mage, but there was always a chance that he'd change.

If one stayed alive, there was always the chance for redemption. He surrendered. He was ready to face her judgement if she chose to execute him, and she could not. It was the one thing that she was not quite capable of, as a vessel of compassion.

Not for the first time, she felt cursed by her magic. Her and him both.

"I cannot kill a brother." She pulled the old man up, he was light, his life stretched out beyond his natural years, and the calling should have claimed him long ago, if not old age. "Can you conduct the joining here?"

"You wish to rebuild the order." Avernus stood straight and proud, eyes calculating. "If that was the reason you wish to spare me, then you need only say so."

Ellyn's eyebrows came together and Alistair felt the anger rising off of her, an under layer of magic unmistakable as she allowed her control to fall away just enough to show Avernus the power she held. It leaned toward creation, but she held considerable power nonetheless.

If there was one thing that Avernus was willing to respect, it was magic. "We can conduct the Joining here. I have all the documents detailing the process, as well as the necessary ingredients, but you will have to provide the darkspawn blood. It's not any good unless it's ... fresh, you see."

"Thank you, Avernus," her expression went back to her usual, bright sunny smile. Alistair was almost disturbed by the change in her demeanour. It was hard for him to tell, sometimes, whether the mask she wore at battle was her true self, and this sunny disposition an act. He shook the notion away, annoyed at his own suspicions. He followed as she led them to a dilapidated table, dragging over three chairs. "Now that it's only the three of us, I'd like you to tell us about the Grey Wardens, the Taint, and the Blight. Tell us everything you know."

3

Morrigan dozed in one dusty corner; Wynne sat mending something by the fire; Zevran was searching the rest of the tower for any supplies left behind. They were not speaking to one another, or even near one another, when Ellyn and Alistair reentered the great room. Wynne's expression grew concerned at Ellyn's sullen look, and the young mage smiled and shook her head. She did not want to talk about it.

She could not talk to anyone about it, save Alistair, and she did not want to talk to him. The issue was rather simple, really. To end the Blight, one of them had to die. Small sacrifice, no matter how one considered it. What was one life when compared to the entirety of Thedas?

Mythal would never allow her to give up her life, and Ellyn reluctantly admitted that she did not want Alistair to give up his, either. She did not want to talk, for she knew Alistair would tell her that he would make that final blow himself. He had proven time and time again whenever she was in danger, he jumped in front of her and willingly acted as her shield. He would gladly be her shield until the very end.

_What would you give to save him? I can save him, if you want me to. I can protect the both of you._

Ellyn shut the whispers out of her mind, for now, and unpacked her bedroll. There was already a fire in the hearth, and the room was warm enough. She warded the door to Avernus's tower, just in case. The old mage was not about to leave, for that room provided the source of his life force, but she was not going to take any chances.

She chuckled to herself a little. She was no less dangerous herself, and she brought an apostate and an abomination with her. It was a strange gathering indeed, even the monstrous blood mage upstairs was not out of place.

What had magic ever given her? It was a curse. Perhaps that mad apprentice in the Circle Tower was right; only a templar's blade could bring her peace. She wished for an end, as she always had. Death was never far from her mind, and she never, ever truly feared it. She feared losing other people, she feared being the one to watch her friends die, but for her own end, she was not afraid. Unlike most Andrastians, she knew what the 'void' meant.

The void meant nothing at all. It meant peace, rest, cessation of life. There was no Maker the spirits knew of, save Fen'Harel. The Golden City was never golden. Blasphemous ideas in Thedas, but Mythal did not remember a Maker, though she remembered everything since the beginning of time.

The goddess would never let her go until her purpose was done, and that purpose extended beyond the Blight, until then, no matter how much pain life was for her, she had to live.

_What would you give to save Alistair?_

_No games, Mythal. Name your price,_ thought Ellyn. It was always going to be more than it was worth, since the Fade always took more than it gave.

_Give him your heart._

She thought of Cullen and their stolen kiss in the tower. Cullen, her unattainable knight. He was awkward and sweet, with his resilient, perfect spirit. Ellyn took his heart that night and knew that she would keep it, more than just as a remembrance of first love - his heart was a token, a favor, and she wore it over her own.

_In a year you will forget his face, the colour of his eyes, the feel of his lips. You loved him with a little girl's heart, da'len. There is much for us to accomplish, and to do so, you must learn to love. _

Ellyn turned in her bedroll so she could see Alistair. He sat by the light of the fire, cleaning Sophia Dryden's armour. It was made of dragonbone, with massive winged pauldrons, obviously meant for a warrior. Wade would probably have to adjust all the straps for it to fit Ellyn, who was both shorter and smaller in stature. She moved her gaze upwards to rest on Alistair's face, he stopped and smiled at her, always, always aware when it came to her.

_Give him your heart. If you can, he will live beyond the Blight._

_Only until beyond the Blight? _Ellyn asked, wary of others who dealt with Mythal before. A certain high dragon named Adelind, for one, and countless others she knew not of.

_The future is uncertain to me as well. I can only guarantee that he won't die in killing the Archdemon. That is all the promise I can give._

"Are you asleep?" Alistair said. Ellyn opened her eyes. He was still sitting by the hearth, with the armour packed away in a bundle. He pulled a wool blanket out of his pack. As soon as he ascertained her wakefulness, he moved to sit by her with the blanket draped over his shoulders. "Didn't think so."

"Too much on my mind." She whispered back at him. The keep was quiet, the keening sound of the damaged veil no longer ringing in her ears. If she closed her eyes she could almost hear Avernus pacing in his tower. "You're mad at me, aren't you?"

"I didn't know I was so easy to read." Alistair wasn't exactly mad at her. Sometimes he questioned her decisions. As a former templar, harbouring a blood mage, even if he was a Warden, did not clash well with his own sensibilities.

"You're not." Mind reading was a form of blood magic, but so was the taint. So far, she was good at catching the extremes. Anger was easy to spot. Ellyn stood and stretched a little, glancing at the sleeping figures around her. Zevran was awake, most definitely. The mages were fast asleep. She tilted her head toward one of the side passages at Alistair, and he followed her into the old commander's office. "The taint's growing stronger. I can feel your emotions when you're close to me. Care to tell me the details?"

Alistair closed the door; Ellyn summoned some wisps for light. They swirled in the air like fireflies, casting the wardens in a soft, blue light. "You spared a blood mage."

"He's not possessed. I spared a man who placed his life in my hands." She crossed her arms and readied herself for a fight.

"You're not blind, so I'll assume you noticed all those cages hanging around his 'lab,'" Alistair felt the blood rising to his cheeks. He was going to respect her decision, since he had looked to her for leadership. She did ask, however, and he was not about to tell her that nothing was wrong. "He's a monster, Ellyn. He experimented on Wardens and took their blood. He's a maleficar!"

Ellyn stared at him levelly as those last words were said. Any blood mage was a maleficar. Any mage who made use of blood magic. Maybe she never slit her own wrists to power her spells, but she did use life force and made use of whatever blood was nearby. Alistair barely tolerated Morrigan and she wasn't even a blood mage. He had accepted Ellyn; he knew that blood magic was not forbidden within the ranks of the Grey.

She paced a little, letting him think on his words. "We're all killers, Alistair." Ellyn stopped her pacing and turned her back on him.

"Don't put me in the same category as that monster! You are not like him, I am not like him ..." Alistair raised his voice briefly, then lowered it again when he heard the echo off the stone walls. "He summoned demons! He's against everything we stand for!"

There was a long silence. When Ellyn finally spoke again, her voice was steady. "What do you know of what we stand for, Alistair? Aside from what we learned today, that is. 'Join us in the shadows' where we shall tell you nothing you don't need to know?" When Alistair did not answer – could not answer her, she continued, "Avernus did what he did under orders from his commander. Sure, he did say that he would have summoned the demons anyway, even though he was fooling himself if he thought he could ever control a spirit, good or bad.

"He's been locked inside his tower for two hundred years, trying to find a way to correct his mistakes. Isn't that punishment enough?" Ellyn turned around, now certain that she was not going to cry. Alistair was silent, but he still looked indignant. Why was it so hard for him to see things her way?

They stared at each other from across the room, the blue glow of the wisps rendering their expressions stark and unreadable. Finally, Alistair let out a long sigh and ran one hand through his hair. "He's insane, Ellyn. He may have yielded to you, but he doesn't think he's wrong at all. How can you trust him not to hurt anyone else?"

"How can I trust Sten to not kill us all while we sleep? How can I trust Zevran to not slit my throat?" She shook her head at him, her golden locks ethereal in the magical light. "I trust people because I understand them, Alistair. I know what people need, and I give it to them. All Avernus wants is a place to do his research, and if he needs grey warden blood to do it, I'll gladly bleed myself once in a while to indulge him."

"You would help him ... experiment with blood magic?" He chuckled in disbelief. Alistair was almost a templar; blood magic invariably led to corruption. By the state of the warden mage's lab, he was beyond corruption.

Ellyn was near exasperated with this man. She might have been as brainwashed as he was, but she had spiritual guidance, and her knowledge was not filtered by the Chantry. "Let's get this straight, Alistair. My phylactery is blood magic. The Grey Warden ritual is blood magic. The Circle keeps my blood in Denerim, and if one day, they want to track me down, they'll use blood magic to do it. So, yes, I'm going to give him a bowl full of my blood before we leave, because that will keep him from sending out messages in the Fade to lure travellers up here to kill. It's not entirely altruistic, because if we want to rebuild the order while the Blight goes on, Avernus is the only warden capable of conducting the Joining. I can learn it, sure, but then he'll lose the only bargaining chip he thinks he has with me."

It was out in the open. She could take the Joining ritual and kill Avernus. She chose not to, because she was not about to take a life when she had a choice. "I see." Alistair set his mouth in a grim line. After almost a minute of silence, he sighed again, and slowly closed the distance between them. When he was close enough to feel her agitation, he said, "this is the same kind of reasoning that saved Connor, isn't it?"

Connor. The demon possessed child that decimated Redcliffe. It wasn't the same reasoning, but it was the same person that chose to jump through hoops just to save a life when a dagger thrust would have been the fastest way. Ellyn wasn't about to argue, so she nodded in agreement. It was not the same thing at all. Avernus did what he did in cold blood. Connor was an unwilling participant.

"Duncan wouldn't have killed him," she stared up at him, avoiding the original question. He would have known if she was lying. "Duncan would never kill someone for the sake of retribution. He would have spared the deranged blood mage if it helped end the Blight. I know he meant a lot to you, but that was who he was."

"How can you claim to know him? You met him little more than a week before Ostagar." Alistair balked, his face taking on that judgemental scowl Ellyn couldn't stand. Mythal thought she could love this man? Not in a million years.

"Duncan conscripted me. I helped a blood mage escape. If he didn't conscript me I would have ended up in Aeonar. Daveth picked Duncan's pocket and ended up a recruit. When Ser Jory backed off from the Joining Chalice, Duncan didn't hesitate in killing him. Do you see a pattern here?" She stood her ground, challenging him. Why did he make her feel this way? She confronted no one else like this. She lived her life appeasing, kept her companions close by with whispers of 'I need you' spoken in a thousand different ways. Alistair made her so angry she practically spat out her words. "He was a Grey Warden, Alistair. The two of us may play at it, and I don't claim that I can ever make the choices he was forced to make. But if you think he's some sort of pure hero, you are fooling yourself."

As soon as those words left her lips she regretted them. Alistair was not ready for this – he had this perfect world in his head where good people were rewarded and bad people were punished. Somehow Duncan was on some pedestal, a heroic, saintly figure, a saviour in his heart. She saw his wide-eyed shock as she took Duncan down to ground level without consideration of his feelings.

Alistair brought the heels of his palms up to his temples, a half-choke sound that was like a laugh left his lips. This was why she was their leader, not him. He saw things in black and white, while she adapted and accepted things the way they were, as children often did. When she stumbled she picked herself up again. Alistair held onto his ideals for dear life when everything fell away in Ostagar. Now she had taken those away too. He felt the world drop out underneath him.

She was there, catching him, one moment he was standing up, the next, he was lying half on the ground, Ellyn cradling his head and shoulders in her arms. There was never a chance to grieve after Ostagar, and grief never truly went away on its own. "I'm sorry. Not for what I said, but 'I'm sorry' for all the things and people you've lost." She whispered, stroking his hair. Not the first fight, and not the last time she would be there to shatter his dreams, to tear his world apart so he could come out the other side stronger than before.


	16. A Rose in the Deep Roads

_(I threw in one single line of dialogue from the game. It's a famous one._

_Just some light personal development in this one along with some fluff.)_

1

Ellyn was discovering things about battles that she never knew before. When she fought as a mage, her focus was spread out. Reserving her mana for auras, she felt injuries in her companions in the form of emotions. A jolt of anger here, a flash of pain there, and she turned and rejuvenated them one by one. With a sword in hand, there was a different kind of focus.

Pain did not seem to matter as much. Instead of feeling a crossbow's bolt as soon as it hit her, now she felt the pain hit her all at once only when a skirmish was well and truly over. She had caused death before she wielded a sword; she had wormed her way into a person's mind while he died, felt the flow of life as a stream petering out into nothingness.

Swords were personal. Her first real kill, crossing into Orzammar, was a bounty hunter with a crossbow slung over one shoulder. She charged the man with her shield up as she was taught to do, the bolts thudding harmlessly into the oak, Spellweaver coming down to disarm and then across to kill, cutting through leather, flesh, and bone. She stood there, frozen, staring into the puddle of bright red pooling at her feet, steaming in spite of the chill, a stark contrast in the snow.

Alistair held her elbow eventually and pulled her away. "It gets easier," he said, as if he understood. Magic was a force, yes, and it killed as well as a sword, but it was different. Detached, somehow, disconnected. Her sword was covered in blood, her armour splattered crimson. She took the life of a thinking, talking person, and here was the proof, which would remain until she wiped it away.

As she pulled her blade across the snow to wipe away the blood, she saw war for what it really was. Butcher's work. Each cut she made, she was also struck, slicing away ribbons of her own humanity, and came a day when it ceased to hurt her, that's when she would know none was left.

She hoped it never got easier.

2

Orzammar featured dominantly in her history books. The Dwarven Shaperate was meticulous in their records, and the Circle Tower's library had an impressive collection of illuminations of Dwarven architecture. No amount of study could prepare her for the sight that laid before her eyes after crossing the hall of Ancestors, however.

For a people that was very short, they built very, very tall. The stone above her was so far away, that if giant spiders were crawling above, she would not have been able to see them. In her books, dwarves were afraid of living on the surface for fear of falling into the sky. In here, she wondered why they did not fear falling into the ceiling or into pools of lava.

It was beautiful and new, more magical than Kinloch Hold. They had an assembly instead of Teryns, Arls, and Banns; a King that was elected instead of the right of ascension; elevators powered by steam, which were in turn powered by lava; a hot water system continually heated by the volcano they all lived in. Magic, powered by lava.

Yet it was strangely traditional and backwards. Her tour of the Shaperate left her in a decidedly undiplomatic mood, their treatment of the casteless crueler than how the Chantry treated mages by far. How could these ingenious people be so intolerant of their own?

"They're both corrupt. I might as well toss a sovereign," said Ellyn, staring over her notes while the group sat in the rooms they rented in Tapster's. "The Aeducans have been politically involved with the Wardens since the first Blight, so Bhelen is the obvious choice ... but ... from all the rumours we've been picking up, he's likely to have killed his brother and framed the other one for it."

"Sounds like Antivan politics." Zevran cut in. "But of course in Antiva, the prince would have hired the Crows to do the actual killing. Getting one's hands bloody is rather unbecoming for one of the royalty."

"I have a feeling he poisoned his father, too. The King and the rest of the heirs dying off at about the same time is just too convenient," Leliana said. For advice on politics, Ellyn invited the rogues. She herself was not unused to the intrigues of the court, for the Circle Tower was a kind of royal court; First Enchanter and Knight Commander as the King and Queen – funny mental image, that – with the senior enchanters making up the assembly. Circle politics turned out just about as deadly, apparently.

"I have no doubt that he did." Ellyn rubbed at her temples. "I need to see them in person, but how? If I talk to one of them, the other will refuse to see me. How am I supposed to figure out which one to support if I don't know what they're like?"

"Oh, I have some ideas." Leliana rubbed her hands together and smiled.

By the end a week-long stay, Leliana had managed to convince both Bhelen and Harrowmint that the Warden was working for each of them while spying on the other one, won in the Provings, and decimated the Carta.

Prince Bhelen also insisted that they move into the royal palace in the Diamond Quarter.

"If and when we crown Alistair, I'm making you chancellor," said Ellyn. The sitting room, part of her suite, was huge, and somehow the sofas were comfortable in spite of the low height. Definitely a step up from Tapster's. "Your talents are wasted in the Chantry."

Leliana laughed, "oh, I don't know about that. Chantry life is very peaceful."

"The Ferelden court is quite peaceful compared to this mess." Ellyn had her notes open in front of her again; names of the noble houses. "It's a split. If the assembly vote on a King now the vote will hang."

"You do still have a Crow with you, my dear lady." Zevran leant back on the sofa with his legs crossed on top of the coffee table, wearing his signature smug smile. "If we eliminate one of the candidates, the choices will become quite clear for them, yes?"

"We're not in Antiva, Zevran. It's not going to be much of a secret who killed them if one of them gets assassinated, and I can't afford a divided assembly right now. Whoever becomes King, I need an unanimous vote to send me that army."

"Both Prince Bhelen and Lord Harrowmint suggested that we go into the deep roads to find their lost paragon." Alistair added. The more he listened to this the less he wanted to be king, not that he ever wanted the throne in the first place. "I'm not looking forward to it, but if that's what it takes ..."

"They've been 'lost' in the deep roads for a year," pointed out Ellyn. "I doubt they brought enough food for that long. The only way they could have survived for that is if they started eating darkspawn."

"If that's the case -" Alistair started, his face taking on a grimace.

"- we're looking for ghouls." Ellyn finished for him.

Leliana and Zevran exchanged a look. Since when did those two started finishing each others' sentences?

Ellyn sighed. How had the last Blights raged for hundreds of years? It had only been little over four months since Ostagar; Lothering had been overrun, the darkspawn had emerged from the deep roads entrances near West Hill, Blight sickness took the villages in that area where the spawn hadn't simply slaughtered all the people. She couldn't afford losing time in the deep roads herself. Thankfully, a Blight on the surface meant less spawn in the deep roads.

"We set out tomorrow morning. I need to talk to ... Sten, Leliana, and Wynne. The rest of you, get some sleep in a real bed. We'll be camping again tomorrow." She waited until the three were all that was left in her palatial suite, as well as Fleur, who hadn't left her side since the companions rejoined near Soldier's Peak. "Wynne, you're not going to like this."

Wynne sat back in the sofa and waited, a faint smile on her face. "Another blood mage you wish to spare?" When she saw Ellyn's mouth hanging open, she shook her head. "No. I'm not going to like it, but I'll respect your decision."

"I'm sending the three of you to the Circle Tower. Take these to the First Enchanter," Ellyn pulled two sealed letters out of the pile of papers on the table. "One of them is just a request for that girl we met outside, Dagna, who wants to study in the Circle Tower. The other is an order of conscription for Jowan."

"Shouldn't Alistair be in here for this?" Wynne said with a note of reproach. "That mage did poison his uncle."

"Not unless Jowan survives the tests, no." Ellyn handed the missives to Wynne. "Collect a vial of darkspawn blood after they release him, and take him to Avernus at Soldier's Peak. He'll know what to do."

"You're asking me to rescue a blood mage from the Circle dungeons and then ... take him to another, much more powerful blood mage?"

"Jowan is harmless." So harmless, in fact, that she doubted he would survive the Joining. She had to try, however. Jowan was innocent compared to Avernus, and she had allowed the older blood mage to live. "Where he ended up is entirely my fault. I should have told him that Irving had his eye on him all along, or at least told him that it was foolish to think of escaping the tower. As for Avernus ... technically he's under my command for now."

Sten grunted his disapproval, but said nothing. Ellyn knew how difficult was for him; the Qunari had an extreme view of mages. At least the Chantry didn't muzzle and chain theirs. Sten had been training with Alistair on templar skills, and short of sending Alistair, the Qunari was the next best warrior to accompany a blood mage.

"Jowan isn't really a blood mage," she grimaced under Wynne and Leliana's combined searing gazes. "He's used blood magic once or twice, and he had had no contact with demons. Otherwise, I would have known."

So, should her and Alistair perish in the deep roads, the Blight would be ended by two blood mages. Ellyn suppressed a smile. Leliana did not miss it and she quirked an eyebrow. "Are you sure you won't need me here?"

"We might be down there for months. I've taken a look at the old maps – the deep roads spread all the way under Ferelden, spreading into the Free Marches. Even with the maps, it's still worse than looking for a needle in a haystack."

"This is a waste of time," Sten said, unconvinced.

"I'll be closer to the Archdemon, if it makes you happy." Ellyn batted her eyelashes at him, and he only groaned in exasperation.

"Watching the Deshyrs bandy about in the assembly is a waste of time." The pile of notes on the table was proof enough. She had gone around polling the nobles all afternoon with Fleur by her side, hoping to figure out which candidate had more support. That was a total waste of time. "I've already picked up a bunch of jobs that require going into the deep roads, so if nothing else, I can better equip the army I already have." Not that werewolves needed armour or weapons, of course, but the mages certainly could use more runes.

This room was too large, she thought, as her friends filed out. She pondered her current choice of companions. Alistair would never, ever leave her side as long as there was a Blight to defeat; Leliana was there because of a religious vision that Ellyn highly doubted, unless it was one the spirits who sent it to her; Wynne, Sten, as well as Zevran owed her their lives. She could doubtless rely on their loyalty. Could she rely on Jowan's, if he survived? After all, it was her fault he was caught in the first place, and her actions condemned Lily to Aeonar.

It was a near thing. Either he would blame her for Lily's predicament, or blame himself. Ellyn was hoping for the latter.

3

Orzammar was full of curiosities and stone walls. The way the walls and pillars were constructed, with the ends disappearing into the rock itself, reminded her of Andrate's temple. Perhaps they were all constructed by dwarves, for theirs was the only way that endured, with their Thaigs still somewhat intact in the deep roads.

"So, is there any reason why we're not all going into the deep roads together?" Alistair asked at camp their first night. There was no real need for tents, and they all lain on their bedrolls around a small fire, carefully kept to a soft glow so as not to stifle the air they breathed. "We might need the numbers."

He was right, in a way. Even with Prince Bhelen's reassurances that the deep roads were especially quiet during a Blight, they still ran into pockets of them in the crossroads, with their ambushes and traps. "We might be here a while, so I've sent some of us to do surface jobs."

"I just thought it's kind of strange that ... you sent Sten off to lead their little group."

"Alistair, 'Sten' is the title of infantry commanders in the Qunari army. It's natural that I let him lead," Ellyn sat in front of the fire with her herbalism kit, preparing for another day of fighting spawn. They had plenty of potions, but if they kept running into giant spiders and deepstalkers at the rate they were going, they wouldn't be able to last three weeks. "He and I have an understanding."

"He's always challenging you, Ellyn. If any one of us is likely to mutiny, Sten would be it." Alistair observed her across their small fire; she was usually not so occupied, and he took in the way her skin appeared to glow in the dim light, blond hair framing her face casting soft shadows over her high cheekbones, her brow creased in concentration as she measured out distillation agents with a measuring spoon, the way she bit her lower lip to steady her hand. He shook his head to clear it. Serious conversation. Right.

"Yes, he always questions my leadership, and then promptly follow my orders to the letter. That's why I'm sending him." She quirked an eyebrow at him without looking up. "Unlike somebody I know."

"What? Are you talking about me? I follow orders just fine!" Alistair crossed his arms, indignant, until he heard Morrigan's cackle across their little camp. "I'm not talking to you!"

"Well, if I were to send you with Wynne and Leliana, and keep Sten with me, you'd probably say no." She smiled through the little flask in her hand as he said nothing, then waited a moment to continue. "Of the two of you, Sten is more willing to follow orders than you are."

Alistair was annoyed at himself for feeling even slightly jealous of their stoic Qunari, "and what do you mean by your having 'an understanding' with Sten?"

Ellyn placed the finished potions on the ground and stoppered them one by one, sealing each with a dab of wax. Silence grew thick between them, but she wanted to take her time. She was about to say something that would probably lead to an argument. Sometimes she wondered why she tried to get through to him. Why she could not placate Alistair as easily as the others, nor did she want to.

It seemed as though he wanted to be provoked, and Ellyn was only too happy to oblige.

"I understand that he likes swords and he follows orders, that I can trust him as long as he has given me his word. If he wants to attack me, he'll ask me to draw my weapon first." Ellyn pulled her bedroll next to Alistair's and sat cross-legged upon it, as she placed the new potions in her waist pack methodically. "'Happiness is fragile. Nothing can be built upon it that will last. Only duty endures.'"

"Do you really believe that?" Impulsively, he reached out to touch her cheek. Her hands paused in their motions and he felt a jump in her pulse. She placed the last potion in her pack and pushed it away to one side as if his hand did not bother her at all. "Is that the Qun?"

"It's something Sten said," Ellyn moved her head away to dislodge his hand, in a motion that made him almost believe that she did not do it to slight him. "It is something on which we agree. I'm not saying that I agree with the Qun. They muzzle their mages and I don't even know what they do with women who show magical ability. Kill them the moment they show signs, probably. But I'm saying that I understand some of the Qunari philosophy, and I trust Sten. He will not betray me – he has too much honor for that."

"Right. He's just so quiet sometimes it's unnerving. I mean, most of the time I don't even notice he's there and he's the biggest person I've ever met." In the beginning he was against bringing Sten with them. The Qunari murdered an entire family with his bare hands, and there was Ellyn, readily handing him a two-handed sword from their salvaged weapons, even throwing in whatever armour she found that fitted him. That was not what was bothering him at the moment, however. "But I've totally gone off topic. Do you really believe that happiness is fragile?"

She stared daggers at him, "I'm a mage, Alistair. You've had your share of chantry teachings. What do you think?"

Ah, of course. Mages were not people. They did not keep titles, marriage was denied to them, their children were taken away to be raised by the Chantry. Magic was a curse. "Excuse me while I take my foot back out of my mouth. I'm sorry."

He watched Ellyn as she smiled wistfully through a fringe of blond hair. Alistair would never understand. She wanted to shout at him, hurt him, hate him, because he was taunting her all the time, giving her confusing feelings that she was not allowed to have. Uncharitable thoughts floated to the top of her consciousness. _Maybe I should let him die. _Guilt chased away that strand of thought as soon as it surfaced, the idea of losing him unbearable.

Ellyn cursed those damnable fairy tales. They were great fantasies up until she was away from the tower, where Alistair pursued her with the persistence of a mabari. She tried antagonizing him, belittling him, but nothing seemed to shake him off. The constant laughter in his voice gave her butterflies, he finished her sentences, stared at her until she turned crimson. Weren't princes supposed to be perceptive? How many times did she have to remind him that mages did not love?

Mythal asked her to give her heart, but she said nothing about pursuing an actual relationship. It would make things too complicated. Ellyn knew that she was trying to find a loophole in the deal, and failing badly. Approaching Cullen was difficult enough, even knowing all along that nothing would come of what they had. Being anything but mean to Alistair was excruciatingly difficult. The only times she managed to be nice to him was when he was already suffering.

"If I had my way, you wouldn't have to live like this." He swept her fringe of hair aside, revealing a pair of frightened eyes, and Alistair sighed. The world was far from perfect if someone like Ellyn believed she didn't deserve love or liberty.

Alistair was tired of holding back his feelings, tired of watching her run away from him. Courting Ellyn was like hunting a rabbit. The moment he thought he was close enough to capture her, she darted away with words or deeds that set her against him. Reaching into his pack, he pulled out a long linen wrapped package, which he unfolded to reveal a rose.

"Do you know what this is?" He held it out to her.

Ellyn held the dry stem in her hand, careful not to crush the petals. It was dried artfully, probably hunt upside down while the petals settled. The fragrance wafted to her as she moved it. "A very dead flower?" Then she felt it, the spirit inside that felt like a beating heart, shining. She drew on the power of the Fade, just a trickle, for with something so frail, an inrush of power could bring death just as well as life.

He stared as the glow of magic trickled from her fingers, slowly, tendrils of ethereal blue enveloped the flower in her hand, the petals reflected the glow, its texture turning velvety under his gaze. When it was done, it was bright and beautiful just as the day he saw it in Lothering. He looked up from it then, and saw her eyes, bright hazel, more blue in this light from the residual magic radiating from his rose, and he heard himself babbling about how he picked it in Lothering and when he saw how it reminded him of her. A rose, untainted and pure amongst the destruction of the Blight, how something so beautiful could survive amidst all this. Her smile spread and she mumbled something incoherent, for he heard no more than the rush of his own blood as his pulse quickened, and a background noise, the distant murmur of the darkspawn so loud in the deep roads.

Alistiar thought he might have been still talking as he leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers, all thoughts of propriety forgotten. He meant it to be a chaste kiss, one of confession, but he had held onto those feelings for so long that when he felt the tingle between their lips he poured his want behind it until she pulled away, breathless and teary.

She looked terrified, the kiss having woken something that she tried all this time to deny. She had always watched him – wanted him, over the fear and the disdain, and the kiss woke the want in her, the need to possess him that she pushed away to the farthest corner of her mind.

When he saw that look Alistair pulled her into his arms, afraid of her running again, pushing him away again, "please don't run from me. I love you." As if speaking those words out loud solved everything.

His words solved nothing, only made things more complicated. He was to be the King of Ferelden, she was a mage. Nothing good could come of this. She could no longer push him away, however much she wanted to, for when he kissed her she leaned into it like she was living in a dank dark cave all her life and he was the sun. She drank up his kiss like the flower soaked up her magic, and she felt how it brought her to life.

"This will not end well, I know it." She shook her head. How did a flower live without sunlight? It would grow pale in the dark, forever reaching upwards, never blooming, but at least it would never know its plight.

"I know. Even if we both live through the Blight, we'll still end up here. In Orzammar. In the deep roads." He smiled wryly, and raised one hand to wipe the tears from her eyes. That was the most optimistic outcome; that they should be together in thirty years, to live long enough to see their Calling. She couldn't help but smile back. Was he ever only able to imagine the happiest ending possible? "If you only think of how things will 'end,' death is the only outcome. Well, eventually anyway. Meanwhile, you should live a little."

There was something wholly familiar to that line of thought, but she couldn't place it now. It was a strange place to speak of living, the deep roads. She did not tell him she loved him, but he thought he felt it all the same. He tipped her head up and kissed her again, this time, her hands came up to rest behind his neck.

"Maker's breath. But you are beautiful. I am a lucky man." Alistair touched his forehead to hers, wearing a silly grin, his eyes shining in the dim light.


End file.
